Beautiful Australia [antikvár]

Introduction Australia-a great and ancient land mass, washed by three oceans and stretching almost from the equator to the roaring forties. A land of diversity, of contrasts and contradictions that mock the phrase 'typically Australian' and the untutored visions of rolling plains supporting gum trees, sheep, kangaroos and lean men with wide brimmed hats. For here, too, are soft green hills, vine festooned jungles, densely forested mountains and snow covered peaks, the blazing red domes and pinnacles of ancient inland ranges, fertile coastal plains, millions of square miles of desert and sombre heathlands-an enormous scenic spectrum. While the greatest variety of scene lies close to the coasts, behind the mountains and forests and well bred geometry of agriculture is the brooding heart of the land, an eternal presence of ochre and earth colours, of fantastic alien shapes and an unbelievable monotony of desert and plain. The band of highlands down the eastern flank of Australia, förmed by a great wrinkling of the earth's crust many millions of years ago, is a vast carapace of broken tablelands and peaks. It shelters and waters the civilised east, provides its superb diversity of scenery and the richness and safety of its pastoral land. This is home to most Australians, the city dwellers and the people of the closely settled rural areas. The three biggest cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, sprawl across the lush coastal plain that pushes up sugár crops in the tropical north and rich grass for the pampered dairy herds of the south. To add to the blessing of the fortunate east the seaboard is indented with river estuaries and inland waterways, lined by thousands of miles of wide beaches and ennobled by rugged cliffs and headlands and, occasionally, mountains which stray from the rangé to meet the sea. In the north it is flanked, too, by the Great Barrier Reef, a 1,200 mile long buttress of brilliantly-coloured coral heads and ledges, tropical and Continental islands, clear, warm waters and an abundance of marine and bird life. Behind the coastal strip the mountains thrust and roll in blue hazed grandeur, densely clothed, sometimes in lush rainforest but mostly in smaller eucalypts and acacias, cut in the more spectacular regions by ravines, gorges and escarpments, pouring water to the coast in short, sharp rivers and down to the more gradual landward slopes into lazy brown rivers which wind, gum lined through rich plateau lands. But gradually the rivers dry up and are replaced by wandering channels that become rivers only after heavy rain, the trees space out until, finally, they become a rarity. The red desolation of the outback takes over, cut by great saw toothed ridges and towering masses that are like no other mountains on earth. Then, more than 1,500 miles west, the coastal pattern in reverse rolls green lands into the Indián Ocean. This huge physical spectrum is host to an enormous rangé of unique and distinctive animál life. There are over 150 marsupial animals which carry their young in inbuilt cradles, among them the kangaroo and koala, the emblems of Australian wildlife, and the Tasmanian 'Tiger', one of the rarest animals in the world. There are the egg laying mammals, antiquated rarities, the echidna and the platypus. The kookaburra's droll laughter is the friendliest and most recognisable sound from within an incredible variety of bird life. Shy lyrebirds, rewarding the patient with a glimpse of their beauty in the