Australia

Information about the outback

The outback is what the Australians call the wide, hot and almost empty centre of their country.You cannot enclose the Australian outback. About 23 of the continent are called outback. That is more than five million squarekilometres, which is twenty times bigger than Germany. The outback is described as the "Red Centre", because the earth and the stones are red. An example is the Ayers Rock. The Aborigines call it Uluru. It is a big monolith in the middle of the outback. The Uluru is a holy mountain for the Aborigines. In the outback most of the people look for the "real" Australia. The "Red Centre" is compared with sanddeserts, steeps, savannas and waterholes. Less than one per cent of the inhabitans live in the outback. Mainly the Aborigines live there. They do not see the desert as a hot and infertile place. They know and understand it, as they lived and hunted there for thousands of years. The biggest city in the outback is Alice Springs. It lies in the middle of Australia and of the outback. 24.000 inhabitants live in Alice Springs. This is the centre of the cowstations.
The animals and plants are so differnt to other animals and plants from other continents because Australia is an isolated continent. The continent was formed about fifty million years ago, when it was seperated from the Southern Gondwanaland. The events that have taken place cannot be compared with other continents. The nature is so natural that there are 20.000 plants and 85 per cent of them do not exist at other continents.