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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. [ N 5 ] It has a total area of 7,688,287 km 2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania .
Australia separated from Gondwana 99 Ma, and initially remained warm and humid with rainforest vegetation. Inland Australia had systems of rivers and lakes with abundant wildlife. Fossil birds, platypus, frogs and snakes are present from this period. From 30 Ma there was a period of global cooling, and from 15 Ma the Antarctic ice sheet formed.
The geology of Australia includes virtually all known rock types, spanning a geological time period of over 3.8 billion years, including some of the oldest rocks on earth. Australia is a continent situated on the Indo-Australian plate .
With a total land area of 8.56 million square kilometres (3,310,000 sq mi), the Australian continent is the smallest, lowest, flattest, and second-driest continent (after Antarctica) on Earth. [5] As the country of Australia is mostly on a single landmass, and comprises most of the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to as an island ...
A number of historic and current Earth (or ground) stations in Australia are used to communicate and track human-made satellites. Many of the sites are associated with overseas government partnerships established generally with the United States, European Union, and Japan.
Australia is the lowest, flattest, and oldest continental landmass on Earth [8] and it has had a relatively stable geological history. Geological forces such as the tectonic uplift of mountain ranges and clashes between tectonic plates occurred mainly in Australia's early prehistory, when it was still a part of Gondwana .
Tasmania's Gordon Dam, one of the largest in Australia, was constructed in the 1970s. It has a catchment area of 1,280 km2 (494 sq mi). It has a catchment area of 1,280 km2 (494 sq mi). Dams and reservoirs in Australia is a link page for any dam or reservoir in Australia.
In 2008, Australia was ranked 18th in the world in terms of net migration per capita, ahead of Canada, the US and most of Europe. [19] According to the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia in 2014, the Australian Government was concerned with three broad policy areas: cultural identity, social justice, and economic efficiency. [20]