POPULATION 18,972,350
ROMAN CATHOLIC 26.7 percent
ANGLICAN 20.7 percent
UNITING CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA 6.7 percent
PRESBYTERIAN 3.4 percent
OTHER CHRISTIAN 8.5 percent
MUSLIM, BUDDHIST, HINDU, JEWISH 4.4 percent
OTHER 29.6 percent

Country Overview

Introduction

Australia is a vast, dry continent, slightly smaller in size than the United States. It lies in the Southern Hemisphere between the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Australia is separated by seas from several island nations, including Indonesia to the north-west, Papua New Guinea to the northeast, and New Zealand to the southeast.

Australia was originally inhabited by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (inclusively referred to as Indigenous Australians), whose origins go back 40,000 years or more. At the time of European settlement in 1788, there were an estimated 600 language groups (and between 300,000 and a million people). In the eighteenth century the British government founded a penal settlement in Australia because of overcrowding in the prisons in England. The colony grew quickly as a...