Australian History in Credo: Introduction

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
B.C ca. 75,000
The advance of glaciers in northern Europe and North America reduces sea levels and creates land bridges between Southeast Asia, New Guinea, the Australian mainland, and Tasmania enabling human migration from Eurasia. These climatic changes have been linked to the effects of a massive volcanic eruption under modern Lake Toba on Sumatra, Indonesia.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Smallest continent and sixth largest country (in area) on Earth, lying between the Pacific and Indian oceans. Area: 2,969,978 sq mi (7,692,208 sq km).

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
The federal legislature consists of a House of Representatives of 150 members representing single-member electorates in all states and territories and elected on a preferential voting system and a Senate consisting of 12 representatives from each state and two from each territory elected through proportional representation.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
Modern political parties began in Australia with the formation of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1891. The ALP was the first modern Australian political party because of its use of a policy platform and through use of disciplined voting by its parliamentary members.

From Chambers Dictionary of World History: Australia's largest conservative party, formed by Menzies in 1944–5 from existing conservative groups.

From Chambers Dictionary of World History: The third largest party in Australia, it grew out of the Australian Country Party formed in 1920.

From Chambers Dictionary of World History: Australia's oldest political party, founded in 1891 in New South Wales following the defeat of the trade unions in the 1890 maritime strike.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
An Australian political party, comprising a confederation of eight state and territory parties. Other than environmentalism, the party cites four core values: ecological sustainability, social justice, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence.

The practice of farming, including the cultivation of the soil (for raising crops) and the raising of domesticated animals. The units for managing agricultural production vary from smallholdings and individually owned farms to corporate-run farms and collective farms run by entire communities or by the government. Agriculture developed in the Middle East and Egypt at least 10,000 years ago.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
Since the European settlement of Australia, agriculture has played an important role in the development of the nation, and Australia is now a major agricultural producer and exporter, despite the ever present threat of drought.

Common name for many species of wild and domesticated ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis of the Bovidae, or cattle, family.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
Like the Americas, Australia is a continent peopled by immigration. In 1920, the foreign born made up 15.5 percent of Australia's population compared to 22.3 percent in Canada, 13.2 percent in the United States, and 24 percent in Argentina.

Aboriginal languages spoken on the continent of Australia. The Australian languages do not appear to be related to any other linguistic family. When Europeans first began to explore and settle in Australia, about three hundred languages were spoken by the hunter-gatherer peoples (possibly 300,000 people in total) who inhabited the continent.

From Encyclopedia of Archaeology
Archaeology combining textual and oral evidence with excavated data and the study of surface remains began in Australia, as in the USA, in 1967.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
As in the Americas, the lure of becoming a large landowner was a powerful attraction for immigrants to Australia and, despite the dryness of much of the land, land hunger was a general aspiration in 19th-century Australia.

From Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices
POPULATION 22,262,501
ROMAN CATHOLIC 25.3 percent
ANGLICAN 17.1 percent

From Key Concepts in Postcolonial Literature
Some of the postcolonial writers whose work has gained critical acclaim include indigenous writers such as Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal writers. Growing out of the oral tradition, many of the works of Australian Aboriginal writers which we might discover are life stories, some co-authored, some semi-fictionalised.

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
As with other aspects of Australian cultural life, the language and form of Australian literature was transplanted from Great Britain. Although accounts of early Australia were written in other languages, including French and Spanish, the bulk of these writings were in English.