Melbourne’s skyline along the Yarra River.
Credit: © Rudy Balasko, Shutterstock

Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales, has been Australia’s most populous city since 1911. However, Melbourne has surpassed  in population for the first time in over a hundred years. Officials expanded Melbourne’s city limits to include the western suburb of Melton, which added enough people to overtake Sydney. According to the 2021 census, Melbourne now has 4,875,400 residents that call it home, only 18,700 more than Sydney recorded. Researchers say Melbourne’s rapid growth is due to international immigration. Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria. Melbourne is known for celebrating diversity, affordable living costs, and strong employment and education opportunities.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics includes surrounding suburbs in the population. In some definitions that exclude surrounding suburbs, Sydney remains the most populous city in Australia. However, Melbourne is projected to pass Sydney in all definitions by 2031. What a growth spurt!

Melbourne is a busy seaport on Port Phillip Bay, on the southern coast of the Australian mainland. Melbourne is one of the nation’s largest ports and Victoria’s commercial, financial, and industrial center. The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 boosted Melbourne’s economy and population, making it Australia’s fastest-growing and largest city.

Prospectors discovered gold in Victoria in 1851. Gold attracted many people and laid the foundation for economic growth. Before the discovery of gold, the population of Melbourne and its suburbs was about 29,000. By 1861, the population had reached nearly 140,000, and Melbourne had become Australia’s largest city.

Mining in Victoria declined in the 1860′s. But manufacturing, encouraged by tariffs (taxes on imported goods) and the growing local market, offset the decline. Melbourne’s growth continued. City officials constructed many public buildings and developed new suburbs. Railways extended wheat farming across the Wimmera River. Officials developed port facilities to handle increasing exports of wool and grain. Melbourne had become the commercial and financial capital of Australia. This period of intense growth ended in the 1890′s, and by 1911, Sydney surpassed Melbourne in size.

Melbourne is one of Australia’s most important cities, with contributions in such areas as the arts, business, and politics. Melbourne is home to the Australian Ballet, the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Malthouse Theatre, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and many other performing arts companies. Opera Australia performs in the city several months each year. Arts Centre Melbourne, south of the Yarra River, includes the State Theatre, the Playhouse, and Hamer Hall, a concert hall.

Melbourne is also noted for its major sporting events. Melbourne is the original home of Australian Rules football, a contact sport somewhat similar to rugby. The city hosts several major sporting events each year. They include the Australian Open tennis championship and the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. Melbourne also hosts Australia’s most popular horse race, the Melbourne Cup, held each year at Flemington Racecourse. The race day is a public holiday in the Melbourne metropolitan area, and the race is popular with viewers worldwide.

Australian Aboriginal Flag
Credit: © myphotobank.com.au/Shutterstock

On July 11, 2022, the New South Wales (NSW) state government announced the Aboriginal flag will fly permanently on the Sydney Harbor Bridge after a five-year campaign by advocates. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is Australia’s most famous bridge, and one of the longest single-span bridges in the world. Including its approach spans, it is 3,770 feet (1,149) meters long. It stretches across Sydney Harbour from Dawes Point in the south to Milsons Point in the north. The new addition will fly next to the Australian flag. The Aboriginal flag is the flag of the Aboriginal people of Australia. The Aboriginal people are descendants of the first inhabitants of the continent.

Sydney Harbour
© Ingus Kruklitis, Shutterstock

The lower half of the Aboriginal flag is red, representing the earth. The upper half of the flag is black, symbolizing Aboriginal people walking on the land. A yellow circle at the flag’s center stands for the sun, the giver of life and the protector. Aboriginal art commonly used the colors red and yellow. Artists traditionally made the colors from ochre, a type of clay.

Harold Thomas, an Aboriginal artist, designed the Aboriginal flag in 1971. Thomas created the flag as a symbol of national identity and unity for Australia’s Aboriginal peoples. The flag was first flown at Victoria Square in the city of Adelaide during National Aborigines Day on July 12, 1971.

In 1972, a group of Aboriginal protesters set up an Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, Australia’s capital. The protesters wanted recognition of Aboriginal land rights. The protesters chose Thomas’s flag design as one of the flags to fly over the Tent Embassy. The flag’s acceptance among Aboriginal groups soon grew. The Australian government officially recognized the Aboriginal flag as a flag of Australia in 1995.

The New South Wales government announced a plan this year that would cost two years and millions of Australian dollars to affix the flag. Many people criticized the costly plan. Officials decided to replace the New South Wales flag with the Aboriginal flag in order to avoid the cost of constructing and installing a six-story flagpole. The money will now go towards initiatives for Aboriginal people.

From the time of the European colonization of Australia until the mid-1900’s, the government took control of many aspects of Aboriginal life. Government policies denied Aboriginal individuals many of the basic human and citizen’s rights that other Australians took for granted. Since the mid-1900’s, government policy has changed. Aboriginal people have received Australian citizenship, gained land rights, and reclaimed some of the land that they lost.

Today, there are more than 700,000 Aboriginal people in Australia—some 3 percent of Australia’s total population. Aboriginal languages, art, religion, ritual, and other aspects of their traditional life are gaining increasing acceptance and support within Australia and abroad. Despite these gains, however, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia still face many difficulties. They are underprivileged economically, socially, and politically. They face more problems than white Australians face in such areas as health, education, and employment.

The Aboriginal track star Cathy Freeman gained international recognition after she was chosen to light the flame at the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. At the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, Freeman won the gold medal in the 400-meter race. She followed her Olympic victory by taking a lap of honor with the Australian and Aboriginal flags entwined. Now, the Aboriginal flag will fly next to the Australian flag 22 years after Freeman’s victory lap.

December 23, 2019

Saturday, December 21, was the winter solstice in the United States and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere—which includes Australia, New Zealand, and other lands south of the equator—the solstice marks the beginning of summer. In Australia, summer is a season known for bushfires. Such wildfires are common in Australia, due in part to the country’s hot and dry climate. Many wildfires start in the remote countryside known to Australians as the bush. Bushfires can be extremely destructive, especially if they reach urban areas. The fires often kill people and destroy property and farmland. They also devastate forests, along with the koalas and other animals that live there.

Police in Jimboomba, Queensland, rescued this koala and her joey from a bushfire in late November 2019. Many other koalas were not so lucky. Credit: Jimboomba Police

A number of major bushfires have plagued Australia in 2019. Late last summer, in February, bushfires consumed more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of land in northern New South Wales. Far more destructive bushfires ignited again in New South Wales in September, burning nearly 5 million acres (2 million hectares) there and in neighboring Queensland. Some of those fires lasted for weeks, while others continue to burn, turning skies black or orange, causing severe damage, and killing a number of people. The bushfires also killed thousands of vulnerable and slow-moving koalas trapped by the rapidly spreading flames.

Bushfires are relatively common in Australia. These fire-damaged buildings are seen alongside a house that survived Christmas Day bushfires near Melbourne in 2015. Credit: © Julian Smith, EPA/Landov

Koalas live only in the forests of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, in eastern Australia. They are found in significant numbers in only a few areas, and the animals are protected by law. Bushfires, however, ravage the koala’s natural habitat and its population. Koalas cannot escape the fast-moving fires, and their only defense is to climb to the top of a tree, curl into a ball, and hope the flames do not rise to reach them. Koalas sometimes survive this way, but they often burn their paws and claws descending charred trees, leaving them unable to climb properly again.

Koalas are not officially listed as endangered, but the population in New South Wales and Queensland has decreased by more than 40 percent since 1990. The animals are threatened by deforestation and habitat loss, as well as the effects of climate change, which is causing longer and more intense heat waves and droughts, leading to more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting bushfires. Beyond the flames and smoke of the fires, many koalas die from lack of water or exposure to prolonged periods of high temperatures. Australia just suffered through the driest spring in its history, and a brutal heat wave peaked on Dec. 19, 2019, when the highest ever nationwide average temperature—107.4 °F (41.9 °C)—was recorded.

November 10, 2016

Flash! Flash! Flash! No, it’s not photographers following around Hollywood stars. It’s a new species of frog that flashes in a different kind of way, with a showy display to ward off attackers. Dr. Simon Clulow of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, and his team discovered this new species while surveying amphibians in a coastal sand swamp at Oyster Cove, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Newcastle Airport. New vertebrate discoveries are rare, but it is incredibly rare to discover a new species so close to a populated area. Newcastle is the second most populated area of New South Wales (only Sydney is larger).

Australia’s tiny new frog species, Mahony’s toadlet, shows off part of its flashy under area. The species was discovered in a relatively urban environment near Newcastle, Australia, in 2016. Credit: © University of Newcastle

The tiny Mahony’s toadlet (Uperoleia mahonyi), also known as the “flasher frog,” is named after Professor Michael Mahony, a renowned frog expert and conservationist and Dr. Clulow’s mentor and supervisor. The frog has warty glands on its back similar to toads, and it fits on the tip of an adult person’s thumb. One of the frog’s defining characteristics is its beautiful black-and-white marblelike belly. Its unique belly pattern, one not witnessed in Australia before, led Clulow to recognize the frog as a new species not previously described. One other unique characteristic is what puts this frog over the top—its flashing ability! If its natural camouflage fails to hide it from predators, the frog will flash the bright orange rust color of its groin area. This brightly colored area, which remains hidden while the frog is resting, contrasts sharply with the rest of the frog, so it delivers quite a shock to such likely attackers as birds, rats, and snakes. The flash-driven pause of the attacker often allows Mahony’s toadlet to dart away and disappear into the undergrowth of its swampy environment.

At the moment, the habitats where Mahony’s toadlets live are relatively safe and in good condition, but with encroaching housing developments, sand mining, and other human activities, Mahony’s toadlet may be gone more quickly than it was found. Researchers estimate the flasher frog population to be rather small, so conservation efforts must be made to help this new species of frog continue to thrive and flash, flash, flash.

October 23, 2013

The Australian state of New South Wales is braced for another day of devastating bushfires. The commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has urged people not to travel in various parts of the state due to conditions that are set to be “as bad as it gets.” Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned that today’s weather forecast—temperature in the mid to high 80′s °F (30′s °C), humidity down to 10 percent, and winds of 50 to 60 miles (80 to 100 kilometers) per hour—is worse than previously thought, making it the most dangerous day yet in the bushfire emergency that began last week.

Dozens of bushfires are burning to the north, south, and west of Sydney, and the city is wreathed in smoke. “You can smell smoke inside buildings,” National Public Radio correspondent Stuart Cohen reported yesterday, noting that health authorities were expecting a surge in cases of people with respiratory problems. Since the start of the bushfires, more than 200 homes have been destroyed, and wildlife experts believe that thousands of koalas, opossums, reptiles, and other animals have been killed. However, only one life has been lost in the disaster.

A dangerous wildfire in the Blue Mountain region was started by the Australian army testing explosives in a military training exercise. (World Book map)

Firefighters from three states are battling the fires through backburning—that is, starting a fire that burns in the opposite direction to the line of the advancing wildfire. Australian fire officials say the threat to the Blue Mountain area west of Sydney “has been averted” for today, but warn the crisis is far from over. In total, 73 fires are burning across the state, 29 of them out of control. Meteorologists note that the severity of the bushfires is due to extremely dry conditions following Australia’s hottest September on record.

Additional World Book articles:

• Hakea
• Australia 2009 (a Back in Time article)

March 9, 2012

Days of very heavy rain in Australia have caused flooding in parts of three states, New South Wales (NSW), Queensland, and Victoria. Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate in NSW, where an enormous stretch–fully 75 percent–of Australia’s most populous state is under water. In what has been described as the state’s worst flooding in 150 years, scores of towns are inundated–from Forbes in central NSW to Griffith in the south and across the state line into northern Victoria. On March 7, the heaviest recorded rainfall in years triggered flash flooding across much of Sydney, Australia’s largest city.

World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.

La Nina weather conditions, which typically bring higher-than-normal rainfall, are affecting Australia’s southeast. “Australia is in the throes of two consecutive La Nina events,” stated Aaron Coutts-Smith, NSW climate manager for Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. “It is very rare to have such persistent, record-breaking rainfall over such large areas .  .  .”  Just weeks ago, in February, thousands were forced to evacuate in Queensland, where residents suffered through a third major flood in less than two years. From 2001 through 2009, the same area, Australia’s southeast, underwent the worst drought in the continent’s recorded history.

Additional World Book articles

• Australia 2006 (Back in Time article)
• Australia 2007 (Back in Time article)
• Australia 2008 (Back in Time article)
• Australia 2009 (Back in Time article)
• Australia 2010 (Back in Time article)
• Australia 2011 (Back in Time article)