Amazing Things You Probably Didn't Know About Australia....

Look them through and say what is the most interesting from your point of view

1. 84% of Australia’s mammals are unique to the country.

2. If you visited one new beach in Australia every day, it would take over 27 years to see them all.

3. The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest living structure, and it even has its own postbox!

4. The Australian Alps receive more snowfall than Switzerland.

5. Around 160,000 vehicles cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge every single day.

6. More than 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coast.

7. Cape Grim in Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.

8. Of the 828 bird species listed in Australia, about half are found nowhere else.

9. The “selfie” is an Australian invention.

10. Over 50% of the world’s whales, dolphins and porpoises are found in Australian waters.

Text 6 Eight cities

1. Read the text about main cities of Australia. Speak about main sights of each.

In each of Australia’s six states - New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania — there is a large city which is near a river and near the sea. More than half of all Australians live in these six cities — and many others live near to them. In fact, most people live only a few kilometres from the sea.

Sydney, in New South Wales, is the oldest and biggest city, with 4.2 million people. It is built around an enormous harbour — some say that it is the biggest natural harbour in the world. It is a busy modern city and its tall buildings are the centre for a lot of Australian business. It is also an international city where you can eat food from all over the world, or just visit some of the thirty wonderful beaches! When they think of Sydney, many people think of the Sydney Opera House. The roof of this beautiful building looks like sails on Sydney Harbour. It was opened in 1973 for music, theatre, and dance. Near the Opera House is one of the longest bridges in the world — Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, is the second biggest city, with 3.7 million people, and it was the capital of Australia from 1901 to 1927. In the 1880s people built many fine buildings in this rich city, and many of them are still there today. It has wide streets, some lovely old buildings, and many large parks and gardens. Like Sydney, it is home to many immigrants, and it has a large Chinatown. Melbourne’s theatres and pubs are famous, and it is a popular centre for art, music, and festivals of many kinds.

Brisbane is in Queensland, on the east coast. Here the temperature can get very hot, and you can still find stilt houses — wooden houses on tall posts which let cool air under the house. Brisbane is an important centre for business, and many tourists also come to visit the city on their way to the beaches of Queensland or the Great Barrier Reef.

Adelaide in South Australia is called the City of Churches, and it is also famous for its city plan, which put parks all round the city centre. It has famous festivals of music, theatre, and film, and the WOMADelaide festival of world music and dance. From Adelaide many visitors travel to the Barossa Valley, where German immigrants began making wine in the nineteenth century. Some of Australia’s best wine comes from here today.

Perth is a long way from the other cities, in Western Australia by the Indian Ocean. The land in the west has plenty of gold, oil, and valuable minerals, so Perth is a rich city. About one-third of the families in Perth own a boat, and swimming and sailing are part of life for nearly everybody.

Hobart in Tasmania is a smaller, quieter city, with a busy harbour, from which boats sail to the French and Australian scientific stations in Antarctica. The city began in 1803 with 433 people — 280 of them convicts. Now it has a population of about 190,000. Visitors to Hobart often go on to see Port Arthur, where the first convicts lived.

Finally there are two more cities - Darwin and Canberra - that are in territories, not states. (The Australian government has more power over what happens in the territories than in the states.) Darwin, in the Northern Territory, has no tall buildings, only long low ones, because during the summer storms the winds are sometimes very strong. In 1974 a storm called Cyclone Tracy killed sixty-seven people and destroyed nearly all the buildings in Darwin. Many Aborigines and immigrants from Asia live in the city, and there is a big army base here as well.

Canberra is in the Australian Capital Territory. Like many countries (for example, Brazil and the United States) Australia has a special part of the country which is just for its capital city. Canberra is the newest of the Australian cities, and its name is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘meeting place’. It is also different from the other cities because it is a long way — 120 kilometres — from the sea, although it is on a river, the Molonglo. It was designed by an American, Walter Burley Griffin, in 1912, and became the capital of Australia in 1927. This beautiful city has thousands of trees, and a big lake in its centre. Canberra is the home of many important national buildings like Parliament House. The Australian government meets here, and many of the people in Canberra work for the government.