The Commonwealth of Australia is a federal state within the Commonwealth of Nations. Its territories are the continent of Australia, the island of Tasmania and a number of smaller islands. It has an area of about eight million square kilometres.
The continent of Australia is mostly a great plain with mountains in the east and south-east. The western part of the continent forms a plateau which occupies half of the continent. Australia's greatest rivers are the Murray and the Darling. Australia has several different climatic regions, from warm to subtropical and tropical.
There are five big cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Each city is the capital of the state in which it is situated. Most of the factories are concentrated in or around the big cities. They produce goods for the motor-car, machine-building, clothing and food industries. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth are the country's main ports. Agriculture is the main occupation in Australia. Wheat and sugar are the main agricultural crops, fruit-growing is also highly developed. Australia is famous for its sheep. The great sheep-farms, called sheep-stations are found in many parts of the country.
Today there are about fifteen million people in Australia, most of them are of British origin. There are now only 40000 full aborigines in the country.
The Commonwealth of Australia is a self-governing federal state. Formally the head of the state is the King or Queen of England represented by the Governor-General. The Commonwealth of Australia consists of six states and two territories: the Federal Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. The Capital Territory is the land around the Federal Capital, Canberra. Australia has a parliament in each state and the Federal Parliament of the Commonwealth at Canberra. The Federal Parliament consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The federal government of the country is headed by the Prime Minister, usually the leader of the party which has the majority.
*Waltzing Matilda - 'Waltzing Matilda' the title of Australia's most famous song, is German for 'carrying a backpack'.
*Bludger - Australians refer to lazy people as 'bludgers'. The word is derived from 'bludgeoner' which is a prostitute's standover man.
*Larrikin - A larrikin is a comical, roguish individual who is prone to rowdy and unruly behaviour. The term was coined from an Irish policeman in a Melbourne court, claiming the prisoner was "larkin about".
*POME - Australians refer to English people as Poms or Pome. This is an acronym for Prisoners of Mother England. May have originally been an abbreviation for pomegranate which is Convict rhyming slang for immigrant.
*The name Australia comes from the Latin Terra Australis Incognito which means the Unknown Southern Land.
*Seppo - Australians may refer to Americans as 'Seppos'. This is an abbreviation for 'Septic Tank' which is rhyming slang for 'Yank'.
*Drongo - Australians may refer to fools, idiots and hopeless cases as Drongos. Drongo was a 1920's racehorse that showed promise but never won anything in 37 starts. In the 1940s, the term was applied to recruits of the Australian airforce.
*Digger - Australian servicemen are referred to as Diggers. This term comes from miners on the Australian goldfields of the 1800's.
*Kangaroo - The name for the Australian marsupial Kangaroo came about when some of the first white settlers saw this strange animal hopping along and they asked the Aborigines what it was called. They replied with 'Kanguru', which in the native language meant 'I don't know' .
*Moomba - The city of Melbourne has a cultural festival using the Aboriginal word Moomba. It seems the festival's initial organisers asked the local Aborigines to suggest a name, and were told that moomba means 'lets get together and have fun.' The grateful organisers subsequently used the name.
In hindsight, the organisers really should have been suspicious that 'lets get together and have fun' could be expressed in two syllables. In reality, 'moom' means 'bum', 'buttocks', or 'anus', while the suffix 'ba' means 'in', 'at' or 'on'. So moomba actually means 'in the bum.'
