Australia Geography

Location and Geography of Australia

The continent of Australia covers a massive area of 7,617,930 square kilometres, stretching wide between the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. Its land area is almost as large as the United States of America, minus Alaska, and almost twice the size of Europe, minus the former USSR.

Australia is south of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, with coordinates between latitudes 10° 41' south and 43° 38' south and between longitudes 113° 09' east and 153° 38' east.

A wide variety of landscape types are found across Australia – from snowy mountains to lush, tropical rainforests. Australia is an island continent and is famous for its sparkling coastline, with sandy beaches and majestic ocean cliffs stretching approximately 20,000 kilometres around the land.

There are approximately 12,000 smaller islands surrounding the mainland – The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea applies the Australian law to large areas of ocean surrounding these islands.

Australia is a relatively low, flat continent compared to others, with the highest peak at Mount Kosciuszko in the Great Dividing Range at 2228 metres high. It is also extremely ancient – where parts of Europe and the USA are measured in tens of thousands of years, the Australian landscape is measured in terms of many millions of years. Australia is one of the driest land masses on the planet, with the majority of the vast interior comprised of arid desert.

The majority of the population live in cities along the coastline, particularly along the east coast. Most Australian cities are built beside or close to bodies of water. Being in the Southern Hemisphere means that Australia has the opposite seasons to the Northern Hemisphere – summer is from December to February, autumn from March to May, winter from June to August and the spring from September to November.

There are three major time zones in Australia  

• Australian eastern standard time (AEST) - GMT minus 10  hours - this applies to NSW, the ACT, TAS, VIC and QLD.  
• Central standard time (CST) - AEST time minus  30 mins - this applies to NT and SA.  
• Western standard time (WST) - AEST time minus 2  hours - WA

Some Australian states also experience daylight saving from the end of October to the end of March – known as Australian Daylight Saving Time (ADST) - Australian eastern standard time plus 1 hour - Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria.