Landscape of Australia

People wonder why such a huge country has a population of just 20 million people. The truth is, Australia can barely support that many. About 90 percent of those people live on only 2.6 percent of the continent. Climatic and physical land conditions ensure that the only decent rainfall occurs along a thin strip of land around Australia’s coast. It’s been even tougher of late: Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in a century. The vast majority of Australia is harsh Outback. People survive where they can in this great arid land because of one thing: the Great Artesian Basin. This saucer-shaped geological formation stretches over much of inland New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. Beneath it are underground water supplies stored some 66 million to 208 million years ago, when the area was much like the Amazon basin is today. Bore holes bring water to the surface and allow sheep, cattle, and humans a respite from the dryness. Just off the Queensland coast, The Great Barrier Reef stretches some 2,000km (1,240 miles) from off Gladstone, to the Gulf of Papua, near New Guinea. It’s not more than 8,000 years old, although many fear that rising seawater, caused by global warming, will cause its demise. As it is, the nonnative Crown of Thorns starfish and a bleaching process believed to be the result of excessive nutrients flowing into the sea from Australia’s farming land, is causing significant damage.