This is the land "Down Under" where winter is summer. It’s the land of the Outback, the Great Barrier Reef, the Snowy Mountains, and Ayer’s Rock. It’s the land of the Southern Cross, a constellation unseen in the northern hemisphere, but proudly displayed, with the Union Jack, on Australia’s flag. It’s a land made of legends, where the Aboriginals embark on "walkabouts" to gain wisdom and maturity. It’s a land of strange looking animals found nowhere else on Earth. It’s a land of extremes in climate, geography, life forms, and purpose. It’s Australia – "Southern Land" in the Aboriginal language. It’s not a destination, a vacation spot, or a tourist hub. Australia is an experience, like the Aboriginal "dreamtime" and once you’ve been there, you know that something extraordinary happened in your life.

The Aboriginals migrated to the continent about 60,000 years ago. It was unknown to the world until the 17th century when Great Britain "discovered" it. By this time the British Empire had grown so large that crime had all but seized its major cities. They solved this problem by taking control of Van Diemen’s Land, as it was called, and exporting its criminals (mostly Irish) to vast penal colonies on the coastal areas like Botany Bay. So strange was this land that the British found it to be of little real use except to house convicts. When the transportation of convicts ended, the colonies became cities; Sydney was first the Port Jackson penal colony. The once-noble Aboriginal people were-and still are- devastated by European diseases and alcoholism, all unknown until the arrival of the British penal ships.

The coastal areas and the interior Outback are so different in geography, it seems impossible that they exist on the same continent. The Commonwealth of Australia consists of six states and two territories; New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, plus the Australian Capital Territory at Canberra and the Northern Territory. All different, and all fascinating.