4 Australian Life 



the nature of the Australian continent itself, its 

 isolation in the Southern seas, its climate, and the 

 peculiar conditions under which it was colonised. 



It is necessary to conceive of Australia not as 

 a colony containing a population equal to little 

 more than one half the number of inhabitants of 

 the city of London, but as an immense continent, 

 three million square miles in extent. Compared 

 to other continents, which have their coast lines 

 indented by huge gulfs, and which push great 

 peninsulas out into the ocean, Australia is a sin- 

 gularly solid piece of land. As a matter of fact, its 

 coast line is smaller in proportion to its area than 

 that of any other continent. The physical con- 

 tour of the continent is remarkable for the same 

 monotony. Its surface is, broadly speaking, a 

 graduated system of immense plateaux and plains. 

 The one striking feature in Australian orography 

 is a strip of highland running from north to 

 south along the eastern coast. These highlands, 

 which separate the coastal plains and valleys from 

 the immense level interior of the continent, bear 

 the general name of the Dividing Range. In the 

 south-eastern corner of Australia, this range bends 

 westward, traversing the whole state of Victoria 

 and ending near the eastern border of South Aus- 

 tralia. It is in the south-eastern corner that the 

 Dividing Range attains its greatest altitude, sev- 

 eral peaks of the Australian Alps being over seven 

 thousand feet in height. 



The eastern portion of Australia consists, then, 



