Australia [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION To the ancient land mass that is the continent of Australia, the 200-year period of western civilization is but a mere speck in time, a fleeting moment in a history of 200 millión years, during which oceans and lakes once fiiled the arid interior and long-extinct volcanoes and earthquakes helped shape the land. The last major land movement, which raised the entire eastern coastal strip, occurred more than two millión years ago. Only about 20,000 years ago did the vast deserts of the centre, once covered by lush vegetation, and the home of dinosaurs and giant marsupials, begin to dry out. For longer than any other continent, the Australian land mass has remained almost stable. The forces of erosion and weathering have been left to continue their work uninterrupted, by smoothing out the mountains and leaving in their wake the fiattest and driest country on earth. Only five percent of the land rises to more than 600 metres above sea level, and none is above the permanent snow line. It is mostly characterized by low-lying plains and flat-topped plateaux. Rivers are few because the worn mountains have led to a lack of precipitation. But in spite of its apparent barrenness, Australia contains any number of stunning landscapes, particularly in the Great Dividing Rangé, which extends from the tropical rainforests of northern Queensland, through eucalyptus bushland, to snow-capped mountains in the south and Tasmania. Elsewhere the Great Barrier Reef stretches south from Papua New Guinea for 2000 kilometres; a tropical paradise of islands and coral cays and reefs, supporting an abundant and complex sea life. In the centre of the continent, Ayers Rock and the Olgas rise like ancient monuments in the red desert sands. To the Aborigines, who first migrated south to inhabit the land about 30,000 years ago, these were sacred sites, inexorably bound in the legends of 'Dreamtime,' when spirit ancestors shaped the landscape to serve as a guardian of the laws of all life. The Aborigines, who developed such a remarkable relationship with their