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Australia

Australia officially the Commonwealth of Australia, [10] is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.[N 4] It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.

For at least 40, 000 years[12] before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, [13] who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups.[14][15] After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.

On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system which functions as a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The federation comprises six states and several territories. The population of 22.7 million is heavily concentrated in the Eastern states and is highly urbanised.

A highly developed country, Australia is the world's thirteenth-largest economy and has the world's fifth-highest per capita income. Australia's military expenditure is the world's thirteenth-largest. With the second-highest human development index globally, Australia ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights.[16] Australia is a member of the G20, OECD, WTO, APEC, UN, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, and the Pacific Islands Forum.Contents [hide]

Etymology

Pronounced [ə ˈ stɹ æ ɪ ljə, -liə ] in Australian English, [17] the name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning " southern". The country has been referred to colloquially as Oz since the early 20th century.[N 5] Aussie is a common colloquial term for " Australian". In neighbouring New Zealand the term " Aussie" is sometimes applied as a noun to the nation as well as its residents.[22]

Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an " unknown land of the South" —date back to Roman times and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Following European discovery, names for the Australian landmass were often references to the famed Terra Australis.

The earliest recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625 in " A note of Australia del Espí ritu Santo, written by Sir Richard Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, a corruption of the original Spanish name " Tierra Austral del Espí ritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit)[23] for an island in Vanuatu.[24] The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south.[25] Australia was later used in a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Dé couverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1676 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny, under the pen-name Jacques Sadeur.[26] Referring to the entire South Pacific region, Alexander Dalrymple used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean in 1771. By the end of the 18th century, the name was being used to refer specifically to Australia, with the botanists George Shaw and Sir James Smith writing of " the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland" in their 1793 Zoology and Botany of New Holland, [27] and James Wilson including it on a 1799 chart.[28]

The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who pushed for it to be formally adopted as early as 1804. When preparing his manuscript and charts for his 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis, he was persuaded by his patron, Sir Joseph Banks, to use the term Terra Australis as this was the name most familiar to the public. Flinders did so, but allowed himself the footnote:

" Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term, it would have been to convert it to Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth." [29]

This is the only occurrence of the word Australia in that text; but in Appendix III, Robert Brown's General remarks, geographical and systematical, on the botany of Terra Australis, Brown makes use of the adjectival form Australian throughout, [30]—the first known use of that form.[31] Despite popular conception, the book was not instrumental in the adoption of the name: the name came gradually to be accepted over the following ten years.[32]

The first time that the name Australia appears to have been officially used was in a despatch to Lord Bathurst of 4 April 1817 in which Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledges the receipt of Capt. Flinders' charts of Australia.[33] On 12 December 1817 Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[34] In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.[35]

The first map on which the word Australia occurs was published in St Petersburg in 1824. It is in Krusenstern's " Atlas de l'Océ an Pacifique".[36]