Australia is located in the southern hemisphere between the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. It is the oldest continent in the sense that it has altered relatively little since life appeared on earth. Thousands of years before the explorers Abel Tasman and James Cook sailed into the South Pacific, the aborigines had crossed the hand bridge from Asia formed by the Malay Archipelago and had spread throughout the mainland and Tasmania. When Capt. Arthur Philip of the British Royal Navy landed with the First Fleet at Botany in 1788, the event that marks the true beginning of modern Australia, there were probably not more than 300,000 Aborigines altogether.
The most striking characteristics of the vast 3,000,000 square-mile landmass are its isolation, its low relief, and the aridity of its surface. Its isolation from other continents explains much of the strangeness of Australian plant and animal life; its low relief results from the long and extensive erosive action of the forces of wind, rain and the heat of the sun during the great periods of geological time when the continental mass was elevated well above sea level. A member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the commonwealth of Australia is a prosperous, independent nation under one government. Like Canada and the United States, contemporary Australia is a political federation with a central government (the Commonwealth) and, six constituent states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania) , each of which has its own government enjoying a limited sovereignty. There are also two internal territories: the Northern Territory was established as a self-governing territory in 1978, and the Australian Capital Territory, seat of the federal capital city Canberra, is administered directly by the Commonwealth, which also governs the external territories of Norfolk Island, Cocos Islands, Christmas Island, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Coral Sea Islands, and Heard and McDonald Islands and claims the Australian Antarctic Territory. The Cocos Islands was a non-self-governing territory until 1984 ,when it was integrated with Australia following an act of self determination approved by the Cocos Malay people.
A. France.
B. Germany.
C. Great Britain.
D. The United States.