Rough Guides - Rough Guide to Australia, The

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the fills you in on history, Australia's indigenous peoples, flora and fauna, film and books and includes a handy section on Australian English.

Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps - in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

More than most other countries, Australia seizes the imagination. For many visitors its name is synonymous with endless summers where the living is easy. This is where the adventures are as vast as the horizons and the jokes flow as freely as the beer a country of can-do spirit and laidback friendliness. No wonder Australians call theirs the Lucky Country.

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Every aspect of Australian life and culture, whether its matey attitudes or its truly great outdoors, is a product of the countrys scale and population or lack of it. Australia rivals the USA in size, but is home to only 24 million people, giving it one of the lowest population densities on earth. The energy of its contemporary culture is in contrast to a landscape that is ancient and often looks it: much of central and western Australia the bulk of the country is overwhelmingly arid and flat. In contrast, its cities, most founded as recently as the mid-nineteenth century, burst with a vibrant, youthful energy.

The most iconic scenery is the Outback , the vast fabled desert that spreads west of the Great Dividing Range into the countrys epic interior. Here, vivid blue skies, cinnamon-red earth, deserted gorges and geological features as bizarre as the wildlife comprise a unique ecology, one that has played host to the oldest surviving human culture for up to 70,000 years (just 10,000 years after Homo sapiens is thought to have emerged from Africa).

This harsh interior has forced modern Australia to become a coastal country . Most of the population lives within 20km of the ocean, the majority of these occupying a suburban, southeastern arc that extends from southern Queensland to Adelaide. Urban Australians celebrate the typical New World values of material self-improvement through hard work and hard play, with an easy-going vitality that visitors, especially Europeans, often find refreshingly hedonistic. A sunny climate also contributes to this exuberance, with an outdoor life in which a thriving beach culture and the congenial backyard barbie are central.

Although visitors might eventually find this low-key, suburban lifestyle rather prosaic, there are opportunities particularly in the Northern Territory to experience Australias indigenous peoples and their culture through visiting ancient art sites, taking tours and, less easily, making personal contact. Many Aboriginal people especially in central Australia have managed to maintain a traditional lifestyle (albeit with modern amenities), speaking their own languages and living by their own laws. Conversely, most Aboriginal people in cities and country towns are trapped in a destructive cycle of racism, poverty and lack of meaningful employment opportunities, often resulting in health problems and substance abuse. To give just one example, life expectancy rates for Aboriginal Australians are ten years lower than those of the rest of the population. Theres still a long way to go before black and white people in Australia can exist on genuinely equal terms.

WHITEHAVEN BEACH, WHITSUNDAY ISLAND