Australia is relatively young as a country, but it is a very ancient land. For over 40,000 years Aboriginal people lived in harmony there with their environment. When England first settled Australia in 1788, however, and made it a penal colony for its overcrowded prison population, all that was to change.

Today, Australia is considered a “settler colony,” a term used to describe countries like Australia, Australia, Canada, and the United States: countries originally colonized by the British and where the indigenous (native) peoples were almost completely wiped out.

Australia is both a continent and an island, situated in the southern hemisphere between the Pacific and Indian oceans. It measures about the same in area as the United States (excluding Alaska), yet it has a population of only 18 million people. Of those 18 million people, 80 percent live in just ten cities, all by the sea. By far the largest of these cities are Sydney and Melbourne.