Australia lies in the Southern part of the earth, one of the seven continents of the world with an area of nearly 7. 7 million square kilometers. It is also the world's sixth largest nation after Russia, Canada, China, the U. S. and Brazil. Canberra is the capital.
Australia is like the U. S. in many ways. The first people to live in were aborigines. Most people live in or near cities. They speak nearly the same English, though there are some very different words that Australians use. For example, they say "bush" instead of countryside, "g'day" instead of good day or hello in American English.
The weather in Australia is warm and pleasant. The warmest months in Australia happen when people are having winter in the U. S. A special point is that few Australians live in the middle part of the country. Because there they can not get very much rain and it is very dry.
The Great Barrier Reef, which is made up of coral (珊瑚) and algae (海藻), is in Australia. It is such a good sightseeing, for it's the world's largest living coral island, about 1,250 miles long.
Sports in Australia seem quite popular. Cricket, the national sport, has lots of fans as well as Australian Rules Football. The boomerang (回旋飞镖), which was used in the wars by the aborigines and is used as a toy by children today, is also pretty famous.
