AUSTRALIA

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!” - Dorothea Mackellar 

Discover the ‘Land Down Under’. Travel to the only continent entirely in the southern hemisphere where the water in the toilet flushes the opposite direction. The whole continent is one country completely surrounded by water (but too big to be an island). Uluru/Ayers Rock, located in the center of the continent, is the largest monolith (solo standing rock) in the world. The aboriginal peoples populated the land over 60,000 years ago and consider Uluru a sacred place. The Great Barrier Reef along the eastern shore is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms (coral polyps).

Captain Cook claimed the land for Great Britain in 1770. When the American colonies won their independence,  England no longer had a dumping ground for its prisoners. In 1788, a fleet of ships carrying 1500 convicts arrived to established a penal colony. This forever changed the history of Australia.

Some of the most unusual animals in the world reside on this continent. Where else in the world do road signs warn drivers to avoid kangaroos? Many rollicking tales with invented language (i.e. Goomblegubbon and Bunbundoolooey) express the humor and spirit of the Australian people. Aboriginal mythology about the earth’s creation ‘dreaming’ and the souls in animals, rocks, plants are told in song, dance, and rituals.