The plants and animals of Australia are different
Rivers, lakes, sea and oceans are highways for trade and communication. People from ancient times have been sailing on seas to exchange goods. But for a long time Australia had been out of reach to the rest of the world. This may explain why in Australia we find people, animals and plants are that not found in any other part of the world.
The last of the continents to be discovered was Australia. It is an island continent.
Look at the globe, you will see that Australia lies under the curve of the earth where the mass of Asia breaks up into bits of lands or groups of islands surrounded by water.
The content of Australia is separated by oceans. Australia is both n the eastern hemisphere and in the southern Hemisphere. Australia is a big, open, uncrowned land. It has some fine modern cites and most of them are sea-ports like Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. But beyond the mountains on the seacoast lie the wide open spaces of the continent.
There are fields and orchards on the green plains. Beyond the plains is the wild `bush’ country with scattered sheep stations. In the bush country, live people called `Bushmen’ who are different from those found in any other country. These native men are called aborigines.
These aborigines have no farms, little of what we call learning and art. But they know the ways of all he animals and can follow any track through their native bush land. They hunt animals with a piece of wood called a boomerang.
The north of Australia is thickly forested. But the entire of the continent is a great desert. This is the least known part of the continent.
It is very hot, dry and hard to travel here. There are many places in this desert where no man has ever visited to this day.
Australia is an island. It is cut off from all other continents by oceans. When you first white people landed, in Australia, they saw many kinds of plants and animals that they had never seen before. There are ever so many kinds of plants in Australia that do not grow anywhere else in the world.
But the animals of Australia are even stranger than the plants. Most of the animals are either mammals or birds. There are a few that may really puzzle you. The fruit bat is a mammal even through it can fly. The duck bill or the platypus is a mammal too-even though it has a bill that looks like the bill of a duck. This strange animal lays eggs. Suckles the young like a mammal and swings like a duck.
The kangaroo is a mammal too. It has a pouch to keep its young ones as it leaps on the grasslands. Mother kangaroo is big but baby Joey is tiny and small.
The koala is also a mammal. It also carries its young ones in a pouch on its back. It sucks the juice of the gum trees and is happy and gay.
Most of the animals are marsupials. They are mammals but the young ones are tiny and a small and are carried in a pouch by the mother.
The plants and animals of Australia are different from those in other parts of world because long. Long ago, the Australian block of land drifted far away from the other main blocks of land and the oceans around Australia acted as walls. For millions of years these are `Water’ walls kept most of the plants and animals of that continent from going anywhere else. They also kept most of the plants and animals of other lands from coming to Australia. Only in the 15th century did man dare to go and explore the land Even today, most of the towns and cities are near the coast because these oceans have become highways now. The interior of Australia is a vast desert and very few people few people live there.
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