Australia
A vast island continent holding the oldest living cultures on earth, founded as a British colony and grown into one of the world's most multicultural nations, shaped by mateship, the fair go, a laid-back spirit, and a love of the outdoors. The complete guide.
Australia is a country and a continent in the southern hemisphere, a vast, dry, ancient land surrounded by ocean, home to about twenty-seven million people, most of them gathered in cities along the green coastal edges. To understand it, begin with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, whose cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth, reaching back more than sixty thousand years, and whose belief in the Dreaming binds people to the land; with the British founding from 1788, the convict beginnings and the long Anglo-Celtic settlement that shaped the language, the law, and the institutions; with the great waves of immigration that have made modern Australia one of the most multicultural nations in the world; with the deep national values of mateship, equality, and the fair go, and the laid-back, easygoing, anti-authoritarian character; and with the love of the outdoors, the beach, the bush, and sport, lived under a sunny sky. From these flow the customs that follow: the warm informal greeting, the barbecue, the love of sport, the great festivals. This guide walks through each in turn.
Overview
Australia is the only nation that is also a whole continent, a vast island landmass in the southern hemisphere, lying between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, south of Asia. It is the sixth-largest country in the world by area yet one of the most thinly peopled, for much of its interior is dry, hot desert and semi-desert, the great Outback, and the bulk of its twenty-seven million people live in a string of cities along the greener, milder coasts, above all in the southeast, in Sydney and Melbourne, and around the other state capitals. The capital is Canberra, a planned city built between the two great rivals to be the seat of government.
Australia is a stable, prosperous democracy, a constitutional monarchy that shares its king, the British monarch, as head of state, represented within the country by a governor-general, and governs itself through a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy inherited from Britain. It is a federation of six states and two territories, formed in 1901 when the separate British colonies joined together, and it belongs to the Commonwealth of Nations. The main language is English, spoken in a distinctive Australian way, and the country is heir both to the world's oldest living human cultures and to a young national history of barely more than two centuries since British settlement.
A few deep forces shape life in Australia. There are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, whose cultures are the oldest living on earth. There is the British founding, the convict beginnings and the Anglo-Celtic heritage that shaped the language and institutions. There are the great waves of immigration that made Australia one of the most multicultural nations in the world. There are the deep values of mateship, equality, and the fair go, and the laid-back, easygoing character. And there is the love of the outdoors, the beach, the bush, and sport. The sections that follow trace these forces and then walk through the customs of daily life.
The oldest living cultures
Long before any other story of Australia begins, there is the story of its first peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, whose cultures are the oldest continuous living cultures on the face of the earth. Their ancestors reached this land more than sixty thousand years ago, perhaps as long as sixty-five thousand, and lived across the whole continent in hundreds of distinct nations, each with its own country, language, and law, speaking some two hundred and fifty languages and many more dialects. For tens of thousands of years they lived as the careful custodians of the land, with a deep knowledge of its plants, animals, waters, and seasons, in one of the longest unbroken human stories anywhere.
At the heart of Aboriginal culture lies the Dreaming, or Dreamtime, a profound and complex understanding of the world that is at once the story of how the ancestral spirits created the land, its features, its creatures, and its law in the beginning, and the living web of knowledge, belief, and responsibility that this creation lays upon people today. The Dreaming binds people to their country, to their kin, and to the law, the lore, the body of custom and story passed down through the generations that tells people how to live, how to care for the land, and how to relate to one another. It is expressed in story, song, dance, ceremony, and in the great tradition of Aboriginal art, among the oldest art on earth, from the rock paintings of forty thousand years ago to the celebrated dot paintings of today.
The coming of the British in 1788 brought catastrophe to these peoples, through disease, dispossession of their lands, violence, and the long injustices that followed, which reduced their numbers terribly and tore at their cultures and families. Yet the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have endured, and today, though they make up only a small share of the population, around three in a hundred, they hold their cultures, languages, and connection to country with renewed strength and pride, and their art, music, story, and spirituality are recognised as a unique and precious part of Australia and of the heritage of all humanity. To understand Australia is to begin with its first peoples and the oldest living cultures on earth.
The wide brown land
The land itself is the second great force in Australian life, a vast, ancient, dry continent that has shaped the nation's character, its settlement, and its sense of self. Australia is enormous, the size of a continent, but much of its interior is harsh and arid, a great red heart of desert and semi-desert, the Outback, where few people live and the distances are immense. The land is old and worn flat, its soils thin, its rivers few and unreliable, its climate one of drought, flood, and bushfire, a beautiful but unforgiving country that has tested those who live on it, the wide brown land of the famous poem.
Because the interior is so dry, Australian life has always clung to the edges. The great majority of Australians live in cities and towns along the wetter, milder coasts, above all in the southeast, so that this vast land is also one of the most urban and coastal nations on earth, its people gathered in a handful of large cities by the sea while the huge interior lies almost empty. This concentration on the coast, under a sunny sky and beside warm waters, has given Australia its famous beach culture and its outdoor way of life.
Yet the Outback, the bush, the vast empty interior, holds a powerful place in the Australian imagination far beyond the number who live there. The myth of the bush, of the hardy pioneer and the resourceful bushman wresting a living from a harsh land, of the drover, the shearer, the farmer of the great inland, has shaped the national idea of what it is to be Australian, prizing toughness, resilience, practicality, and self-reliance, even though most Australians have always lived in the cities by the coast. The unique land, with its strange and wonderful animals and plants found nowhere else, its red deserts and its golden beaches, is central to how Australians see their country. To understand Australia is to understand the wide brown land that has shaped it.
From convicts to a nation
Modern Australia began, for its European settlers, in 1788, when Britain established a colony at what is now Sydney, and its beginnings were unusual, for the first colony was a penal one, a place to send convicts transported from Britain. This convict founding, the arrival of the First Fleet and the long decades when Australia was in part a prison colony, left a deep and lasting mark on the national character, contributing to a certain irreverence toward authority, a sympathy for the underdog, and a rough egalitarian spirit, and the convict heritage, once a source of shame, is now woven into the national story and even worn with a certain pride.
Through the nineteenth century the colonies grew, joined by free settlers, above all from Britain and Ireland, the Anglo-Celtic stock that long formed the bulk of the population and gave Australia its English language, its British law and institutions, its Christianity, and much of its culture. The gold rushes of the eighteen-fifties brought a flood of new immigrants from many lands, swelling the population and diluting the convict stain, and the colonies grew prosperous and confident. The hard work of building farms, sheep stations, and towns in a difficult land bred the values of resilience and mateship that became central to the national idea.
In 1901 the six separate colonies joined together in Federation to form the Commonwealth of Australia, a single self-governing nation under the British Crown, an event marked as the symbolic birth of the country. The new nation, however, soon adopted the White Australia Policy, which for decades favoured British and European immigrants and shut out others, a now-repudiated chapter of the national story. The deep ties to Britain remained strong well into the twentieth century, even as Australia found its own voice and identity. To understand modern Australia is to understand its founding, from the convict beginnings through the Anglo-Celtic settlement to the birth of the nation at Federation.
A nation of immigrants
Modern Australia is, above all, a nation made by immigration, and the transformation from the narrowly British society of a century ago into one of the most multicultural nations on earth is one of the great stories of the country. After the Second World War, Australia opened its doors to mass immigration, first from across Europe, bringing waves of Italians, Greeks, and others who reshaped the food and life of the cities; and then, after the old White Australia Policy was dismantled in the nineteen-seventies and the nation embraced multiculturalism, from across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the wider world.
The result is a country of striking diversity. Nearly a third of all Australians today were born overseas, and many more are the children of immigrants, so that the population is drawn from every corner of the earth, with great communities of people of Chinese, Indian, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Lebanese, and a hundred other origins, especially in the big cities. Australia has made multiculturalism a part of its national identity, an ideal that people of all backgrounds can become fully Australian while keeping their own heritage, languages, and faiths, and the cities hum with the foods, festivals, languages, and cultures of the world.
This great mixing has changed Australia beyond recognition in a few generations, above all in the cities, transforming its food, which is now among the most varied and exciting anywhere; its calendar of festivals; its faiths, with growing communities of many religions alongside the Christian majority; and its very sense of itself. The blend of the ancient Indigenous cultures, the British and Irish foundation, and the immigrants of the world has produced a distinctive, diverse, and confident modern nation. There are tensions and debates in so diverse a society, as everywhere, but multiculturalism has become a defining and largely successful feature of Australian life. To understand Australia is to understand the great waves of immigration that made it one of the most multicultural nations in the world.
Mateship and the fair go
At the heart of the Australian idea of itself lie a few deep values, and chief among them is mateship, a word that carries far more weight in Australia than mere friendship. Mateship means loyalty, solidarity, and standing by one another, especially in hardship, a bond of equality and mutual support between people who are mates. Born, the story goes, of the hardships of the convict era, the bush, and the wars, when survival depended on sticking together, mateship has become a cherished national ideal, a belief in looking out for your mates, helping one another, and never letting a mate down.
Bound up with mateship is the deep Australian commitment to equality and to the fair go, the belief that everyone deserves a fair chance, a fair deal, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Australia prides itself on being an egalitarian society, suspicious of class, rank, and privilege, where a person is judged by their character and not their birth, and where the ordinary person is held in honour. This egalitarian spirit runs deep, in the easy informality between people of every station, in the dislike of those who put on airs, and in the national self-image as a place of equality and opportunity.
From this same root grows one of the most distinctive of Australian attitudes, the tall poppy syndrome, the tendency to cut down those who grow too big for their boots, who boast, show off, or set themselves above others. Australians admire success but distrust arrogance, and the person who stays humble and down-to-earth, who does not skite or big-note themselves, is the one who earns respect. For a visitor, the keys are to be genuine, modest, and easygoing, to treat everyone as an equal, and to value loyalty and a fair go. To understand Australia is to understand mateship, the fair go, and the deep egalitarian spirit that lies at the heart of the national character.
The laid-back character
Australians are famous for a relaxed, easygoing, laid-back approach to life, an unhurried and good-humoured manner that is one of the most cherished features of the national character. The phrase no worries captures something real in the Australian temperament: a casualness, an optimism, a reluctance to take things, or oneself, too seriously, and a preference for the easy and informal over the stiff and formal. Australians value a relaxed attitude, a sense of perspective, and the ability to take life as it comes, and the easygoing, she'll-be-right spirit is a point of national pride.
This relaxed character goes together with a deep informality and a dislike of pomp, ceremony, and pretension. Australians are casual and direct with one another, quick to use first names, slow to stand on rank or title, and uncomfortable with the formal and the stuffy. There is a strong anti-authoritarian streak, an irreverence toward the powerful and the pompous, a readiness to question authority and to take the powerful down a peg, that runs back to the convict and bush origins and remains a lively part of the national spirit.
And there is the famous Australian humour, dry, ironic, irreverent, and above all self-deprecating, a love of taking the mickey, of teasing and being teased, of not taking oneself seriously. Australians joke and banter readily, often by gently mocking one another and themselves, and the ability to take a joke, to laugh at oneself, and to give as good as one gets is valued. This teasing, which can surprise the unprepared, is usually a sign of warmth and acceptance, for to be teased is to be treated as one of the gang. For a visitor, the way to get on is to be relaxed, informal, and good-humoured, to not take oneself too seriously, and to enter into the spirit of the banter. To understand Australia is to understand its laid-back, irreverent, self-mocking character.
G'day and Australian English
Australian greetings are warm, casual, and informal, in keeping with the easygoing national character. The classic Australian greeting is G'day, short for good day, often followed by mate, and Australians greet one another and newcomers with an easy friendliness, a handshake, and a relaxed manner, moving quickly to first names and informality. The formality of some other cultures is largely absent; Australians treat one another as equals from the first, with an open, casual, down-to-earth warmth, and they extend this same easy friendliness to visitors.
Australian English is one of the great pleasures and distinctive features of the culture, a colourful version of English with its own accent, words, and turns of phrase. Australians love to shorten words and add an ending, so that breakfast becomes brekkie, afternoon arvo, a barbecue the barbie, a service station a servo, sunglasses sunnies, and so on through a vast and inventive vocabulary. The speech is full of slang, of vivid expressions, of understatement and irony, and of the cheerful profanity that Australians use more freely and good-naturedly than many cultures, often as a sign of friendliness rather than offence.
The manner of speech matches the character: direct, frank, friendly, and laced with humour and understatement. Australians say what they mean plainly, value sincerity over flattery, and weave teasing and banter through their talk. They are generally relaxed and open in conversation, easy to talk to, and welcoming to strangers, though they have little patience for those who put on airs or take themselves too seriously. For a visitor, the keys are to be friendly, casual, and genuine, to not be thrown by the teasing or the slang, and to meet the easy Australian warmth in kind. To understand Australia is to understand G'day, the love of language and slang, and the warm informality of Australian talk.
The barbie and Australian food
Food in Australia tells the whole story of the nation, from its British roots through its Indigenous heritage to its multicultural present, and eating is woven through the relaxed, sociable, outdoor way of life. The most iconic of all Australian food customs is the barbecue, the barbie, the casual outdoor grilling of meat and seafood in the backyard, the park, or the beach, gathered with family and friends in the open air, a quintessential expression of the Australian love of the outdoors, of informality, and of easygoing togetherness. To be invited to a barbie is to be welcomed in the most Australian of ways.
The older Australian food was rooted in its British heritage, hearty and plain: the meat pie, a national institution; fish and chips; the Sunday roast; and the much-loved oddities of the national diet, Vegemite, the dark, salty yeast spread that Australians eat on toast and that baffles outsiders; the pavlova, the meringue dessert claimed proudly as Australian; the lamington, the little sponge cake in chocolate and coconut; and the Anzac biscuit. Meat has always been central, and Australia's fine produce, its beef and lamb, its seafood, its fruit and wine, is a source of pride.
Today, Australian food is among the most varied and exciting in the world, transformed by the great waves of immigration. The cities overflow with the cuisines of the world, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lebanese, Indian, and a hundred more, and a vibrant modern Australian cooking has grown up that draws freely on Asian and Mediterranean influences and the superb local produce. There is a renewed interest, too, in the native bush foods long eaten by Aboriginal people, the kangaroo and emu, the wattleseed and quandong and lemon myrtle. Australia is also a great coffee culture and a fine wine country. To understand Australia is to understand the barbie, the beloved national foods, and the rich multicultural table of the modern nation.
Beach, bush, and the open air
Australians love the outdoors with a passion that is central to the national way of life, blessed as they are with a sunny climate, vast spaces, and a glorious coast. Above all there is the beach, for with most Australians living near the sea and the summers long and hot, beach culture is woven deep into the national identity: swimming, surfing, sunbathing, and gathering by the water are beloved pastimes, the surf lifesaver is a national icon, and the beach is a great democratic playground where all are equal in their swimmers. The image of the bronzed Australian at the beach is one the nation cherishes.
Beyond the beach, the love of the open air runs through everything: the backyard barbecue, the camping trip, the bushwalk, the picnic in the park, the sport played outdoors, the gardening, and the general preference for being outside under the sky. The mild climate of much of the country, the long summers, and the abundance of natural beauty, from the beaches to the bush to the great natural wonders, encourage an active, outdoor, healthy way of life that Australians value highly. Weekends and holidays are given to the outdoors, to the coast, the bush, and the open air.
The vast and beautiful natural environment is a source of deep national pride and pleasure, from the Great Barrier Reef to the red heart of Uluru, from the rainforests to the endless beaches, and Australians feel a strong bond with their unique land and its strange and wonderful wildlife. This love of nature and the outdoors shapes the national character, fostering the relaxed, healthy, active, sun-loving way of life for which Australia is known. For a visitor, to share in the outdoor life, the beach, the barbie, the bush, is to taste the Australian way. To understand Australia is to understand the deep love of the beach, the bush, and the open air, lived under a generous sky.
A sporting nation
Australians are passionate about sport to a degree few nations can match, and sport holds a central place in the national life, identity, and conversation. Blessed with a sunny climate and an outdoor culture, and proud of punching above their weight on the world stage, Australians play and follow sport with deep devotion, and sporting heroes are among the most admired figures in the land. Sport is woven through the calendar, the media, and daily talk, a great shared passion that crosses every divide.
The favourite sports tell their own story. Cricket is the great summer game, followed with deep devotion, and the Test matches and the rivalry with old foes, above all England in the Ashes, grip the nation. In winter, football reigns, in several codes: Australian Rules football, the footy, the fast, high-leaping game born in Melbourne and beloved across much of the country; rugby league and rugby union, strongest in the eastern states; and soccer, growing fast. Beyond these, Australians excel and delight in swimming, surfing, tennis, netball, sailing, and a host of other sports, and great events like the Melbourne Cup horse race, which famously stops the nation, and the Australian Open tennis are fixtures of the national year.
Sport expresses the deepest national values: the love of the outdoors, the fair go and the level playing field, the admiration for skill, effort, and team spirit, the mateship of the team, and the egalitarian pride in ordinary people achieving great things. It is also a great unifier, a shared passion that binds the diverse, multicultural nation, and a source of intense national pride when Australians triumph on the world stage. For a visitor, to talk sport is to find common ground with almost any Australian. To understand Australia is to understand the depth of its love of sport and the central place it holds in the life of the nation.
The ANZAC legend
Of all the days in the Australian year, none is more solemn or more deeply felt than Anzac Day, the twenty-fifth of April, and at the heart of the national identity lies the Anzac legend, born in the tragedy and heroism of the First World War. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the soldiers who landed at Gallipoli, in what is now Turkey, in 1915, in a doomed campaign of terrible loss. Though the campaign failed, the courage, endurance, and mateship of the Anzac soldiers came to be seen as the symbolic birth of the Australian nation and the embodiment of its finest qualities.
The Anzac legend enshrines the virtues Australians most admire: courage and endurance in hardship, ingenuity, good humour under fire, and above all mateship, the loyalty of soldiers to one another. The story of the ordinary Australian digger, brave, irreverent, resourceful, and loyal to his mates, became a central national myth, and the sacrifice of those who served and died in that war and the wars that followed is held in deep and lasting reverence.
Anzac Day is marked across the nation with profound solemnity and feeling. In the pre-dawn darkness, crowds gather at war memorials in every town and city for the dawn service, to remember the fallen; the old soldiers and their descendants march; the haunting notes of the Last Post sound; and the words are spoken, lest we forget. It is a day of national mourning and pride, honouring all who have served, and its observance has grown stronger, not weaker, with the passing of the generations. For Australians, Anzac Day touches something deep in the national soul. To understand Australia is to understand the Anzac legend and the reverence with which the nation remembers its fallen on Anzac Day.
Holidays and the year
The Australian year is marked by a blend of holidays drawn from its British and Christian heritage, its national history, and its multicultural present, all shaped by the upside-down seasons of the southern hemisphere, where Christmas falls in the heat of summer. The great national days are Australia Day on the twenty-sixth of January, marking the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, celebrated with gatherings, barbecues, and festivities, though increasingly debated as a date that marks dispossession for Indigenous Australians; and the solemn Anzac Day in April.
The Christian festivals hold their place, transformed by the climate. Christmas comes in midsummer, so that the traditional roast may give way to seafood, cold meats, and salads eaten outdoors, and Australians may spend the day at the beach or around the barbecue, blending British custom with the southern summer. Easter, in the cooler autumn, is a major holiday, with the long weekend a time for family, travel, and the outdoors. New Year is celebrated with great festivity, Sydney's harbour fireworks among the most famous in the world.
To these are joined the great calendar of sporting events that function almost as national festivals, the Melbourne Cup, the cricket, the football grand finals; the many festivals of the multicultural nation, Chinese New Year, Diwali, and the celebrations of communities from around the world, now woven into the national year; the arts festivals of the great cities; and Indigenous cultural festivals like Garma. Australians love a celebration, a long weekend, and an excuse to gather outdoors with family and friends. To understand Australia is to understand its calendar, where British and Christian holidays, national days, sporting events, and the festivals of the world meet under the southern sun.
Faith and the milestones of life
Australia is a largely secular society today, though shaped by a Christian heritage and now home to many faiths. Christianity, brought by the British and Irish settlers, long held the central place, and a Christian majority remains, divided chiefly between Catholic and Protestant traditions, with the Irish Catholic and British Protestant strands an old feature of the social fabric. But religious practice has declined sharply, a large and growing share of Australians profess no religion, and the country is now one of the more secular in the world, with faith for many a matter of heritage and occasion more than regular devotion.
The great waves of immigration have made modern Australia religiously diverse as well, with significant communities of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and others adding their faiths and festivals to the national life, especially in the big cities. And the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples keep their own deep spiritual traditions, rooted in the Dreaming and the connection to country. This blend of a Christian heritage, widespread secularism, and growing religious diversity marks the modern nation.
The milestones of life are marked according to each family's faith and tradition, but in the relaxed, informal, multicultural Australian way. Weddings range from church ceremonies to the very popular outdoor and beach weddings that suit the climate and the easygoing spirit, followed by a celebration with family and friends; Australia recognises marriage for same-sex couples. Births are welcomed, and christenings or naming ceremonies mark the arrival of children. Funerals, religious or secular, gather the community to mourn and remember. Through the milestones run the threads of Australian life: family, informality, diversity, and the warmth of gathering. To understand Australia is to understand its secular, diverse, easygoing approach to faith and the marking of life's milestones.
Arts and the Australian voice
Australia has found a distinctive voice in the arts, drawing on its unique land, its history, its Indigenous heritage, and its multicultural present. Oldest and most remarkable is Aboriginal art, among the most ancient artistic traditions on earth, from the rock paintings of tens of thousands of years ago to the celebrated dot paintings and bark paintings of today, which carry the stories of the Dreaming and have won deep recognition and acclaim around the world. This living Indigenous art is one of Australia's great gifts to world culture.
Australian literature, film, and music have given the nation a strong creative voice. Writers have captured the land, the bush, the city, and the immigrant and Indigenous experience; Australian cinema has produced acclaimed films and sent a remarkable number of actors and filmmakers to the world stage; and Australian music, from rock to country to classical, has flourished. The visual arts have wrestled memorably with the strange beauty of the land, and the great cities support fine galleries, theatres, opera, and ballet, the Sydney Opera House standing as the nation's most famous building and a symbol of its cultural life.
Running through Australian art is a search for what is distinctively Australian, a coming to terms with the land, the history, and the identity of a young nation in an ancient continent, far from the old centres of European culture yet increasingly confident in its own voice. The multicultural present has enriched the arts immeasurably, bringing new stories and traditions, and the Indigenous renaissance has given Australian culture a depth reaching back tens of thousands of years. For a visitor, the arts offer a window into the Australian soul and its long reckoning with land and belonging. To understand Australia is to understand its arts, from the oldest living art on earth to the confident, diverse creative voice of the modern nation.
Reconciliation
No account of Australia today is complete without the long and unfinished work of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, one of the deepest and most important matters in the national life. The arrival of the British in 1788 brought dispossession, violence, disease, and lasting injustice to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who lost their lands and suffered terribly, and the wrongs of the past, including the forced removal of children known as the Stolen Generations, cast a long shadow over the nation.
The work of facing this history and building a just relationship has grown over recent decades. Landmark moments have included the granting of full citizenship rights to Aboriginal people in the nineteen-sixties, the recognition of native title to land, the formal national apology to the Stolen Generations, and the ongoing efforts to close the gap in health, education, and opportunity between Indigenous and other Australians. The acknowledgement of country, the recognition of the traditional owners of the land at public gatherings, has become a widespread and meaningful practice.
Much remains contested and unfinished. Australians continue to debate how best to recognise the first peoples, how to address continuing disadvantage, and how to reckon honestly with the national history, including the meaning of Australia Day itself, which falls on the anniversary of British arrival. These are matters of deep feeling and genuine difficulty. Yet the growing recognition of the unique place, the suffering, and the enduring cultures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples marks a profound shift in how the nation understands itself, reaching toward a fuller and more honest sense of what Australia is. To understand Australia today is to understand the long, vital, and unfinished journey of reconciliation.
The nation today
Australia today is a stable, prosperous, democratic nation of about twenty-seven million people, an island continent in the southern hemisphere with its capital at Canberra and its great cities strung along the coasts. It is a constitutional monarchy and a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy, a federation of six states and two territories, sharing the British monarch as head of state and belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations, with the question of whether to become a republic a recurring national debate. Its prime minister, Anthony Albanese, leads the government. It is a wealthy country, rich in natural resources and farmland, with an advanced economy and a high standard of living.
Modern Australia is one of the most successful multicultural nations in the world, drawing its people from every corner of the earth and increasingly oriented toward its own region, the Asia-Pacific, even as it keeps its old ties to Britain and its close friendship with the United States. It faces real challenges: the long work of reconciliation with its first peoples; the pressures of housing affordability and the cost of living; the management of immigration; the demands of a changing climate on a dry and fire-prone land; and the search for its place in a shifting world and a rising Asia. These are the concerns of a confident, mature nation finding its way.
Through it all, Australia holds firmly to the character that defines it. The oldest living cultures on earth endure and renew themselves; the vast land still shapes the national soul; the multicultural society grows ever richer; and the deep values, mateship, the fair go, equality, the laid-back and irreverent spirit, the love of the outdoors, the beach, and sport, remain as strong as ever. To know Australia is to meet a young nation on an ancient continent, easygoing and egalitarian, diverse and confident, bound to the oldest human story on earth and open to the whole world, living its relaxed and sunlit life at the bottom of the globe.