Austrālija: ģeogrāfija, klimats un dabas resursi

The remotest of the settled continents, Australia is also the flattest and, except for Antarctica, the driest. The average elevation is about 300 m (987 ft) and only 6 per cent of its area is above 610 m (2,000 ft). The vast interior of Australia, known to white Australians as the Outback, is made up of plains and low plateaux, which are generally higher in the north east. Low lying coastal plains, averaging about 65 km (40 mi) in width, fringe the continent. The coastal plains in the east, south east, and south west are the most densely populated areas of Australia.

In the east the coastal plains are separated from the interior by the Great Dividing Range, or Eastern Highlands. This mountainous region averages approximately 1,220 m (4,000 ft) in height and runs parallel to the eastern coast from the Cape York Peninsula in the north to Victoria State in the south east. Subdivisions of the range have many names, including, from north to south, the New England Range, the Blue Mountains, and the Australian Alps, including the Snowy Mountains. In Victoria, where the range extends westward, it is known as the Grampians, or by the name given by the indigenous Aborigines, Gariwerd. The highest peak in the Australian Alps, and the loftiest in Australia, is Mount Kosciusko (2,228 m/7,310 ft), in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. The Great Dividing Range continues into Tasmania, which was separated from the south eastern tip of the continent by the shallow Bass Strait between 13,500 and 8,000 years ago when sea levels rose.

Between the Western Australian Shield and the Great Dividing Range is the Great Artesian Basin region, an area of vast plains containing some of the most productive arable and range lands in Australia. It comprises three major basins: the Carpentaria, the Eyre, and the Murray basins. The rolling plains of the Carpentaria Basin form a narrow corridor running inland from the Bay of Carpentaria, between the Isa Highland on the north eastern edge of the shield and the Great Dividing Range. The Eyre Basin lies to the south of the Carpentaria Basin, occupying almost 1.3 million sq km (500,000 sq mi) of the centre and north of the continent, in south western Queensland, north eastern South Australia, and north western New South Wales. There are rolling plains in the north of the basin. Further into the arid interior, the land becomes flatter and changes into stony desert. There are sand dunes in the Simpson Desert, which lies to the north of Lake Eyre near the western edge of the basin. Lake Eyre, one of the largest of the salt lakes scattered through the interior, occupies the lowest part of the continent and many river systems drain into it. Uluru (Ayers Rock) lies to the west of Lake Eyre on the border between the Eyre Basin and the Western Australian Shield, in the centre of Australia. With a basal circumference of about 9 km (6 mi), and rising sharply from the surrounding plain to about 348 m (1,142 ft), Uluru is believed to be the largest monolith in the world.