Oceania: Australia - Largest

NASA/JPL/NIMA. “WorldSRTM-noPoles-giant” Online Image. Earth Observatory. 16 May 2005 <http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/PIA03395_lrg.jpg>

Oceania: Australia - Largest

This image was created from a larger Public Domain world map produced from data obtained by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The world map was cropped to the Australia and resized to twice normal size using a trial version of Adobe Photoshop. Using Google's free Picasa2 program, the color and lighting were then enhanced and finally sharpened to obtain the image above. The original image can be viewed at the NASA link above.

Australia was first populated by humans, homo sapiens sapiens, around 40,000BC. It was the only continent whose inhabitants subsisted solely using the hunter-gatherer lifestyle at the time of contact with Europeans; in 1770 when Captain James Cook sited its lands and charted its East coast. The native populations never developed agriculture so they never had the food surpluses to advance to higher population densities necessary for chiefdoms and states. As such it had little hope of avoiding the same trauma that afflicted the Americas, and Australians today suffer with the legacy of their abuse and cultural destruction of the native aboriginal populations. Similarly, Americans suffer with a very similar legacy from their treatment of Native Americans. Australia’s legacy of mainstream racism was probably best exemplified by the “White Australia” policy passed in 1902 which banned non-European immigrants for 60 years.

Like the Americas, Australian immigration boomed after gold strikes in 1851, and most immigration was by choice even before Britain ceased to transport convicts to Australian settlements in 1867. Though still officially linked with the British crown, Australia has established itself as an effectively autonomous nation: it’s most important independent decisions being its defense treaty with New Zealand and the US in 1951, and its championship of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) in 1989.