The Senate Chamber can seat 120 Senators.

Currently there are 76 senators. They are popularly elected for 6 year terms. There are 12 senators from each state and two each from each territory.

HISTORY OF CANBERRA

Aborigines lived around what is now Canberra for thousands of years.

1820 The first Europeans to visit the Limestones plains where current day Canberra is located were Joseph Wild, James Vaughan and Charles Throsby.

1824 Joshua John Moore took up the first land grant on the Limestone Plains. He called his property "Canberry" after the name the local aborigines called the place. His property was where the the Australian National University and Lake Burley Griffin is today.

1825 Robert Campbell started a grazing station on the Limestone Plains. He named his property "Duntroon" after the family castle in Scotland. He built a house called Duntroon House which was added on to by his son and descendants. It is part of the Royal Military College today.

Many other people also farmed and grazed the land around the Limestone Plains.

1901 On January 1 Queen Victoria signed the Constitution Act making Australia an independent country. Both Sydney and Melbourne wanted the national capital to be in their cities. So to prevent too much rivalry a search was begun to find a new site for the federal capital.

1908 The Canberra area was selected as the future site for the capital of Australia.

1911 An international competition was launched to find the best plan for the new city. The design by an American landscape architect named Walter Burley Griffin won the competition.

1927 The temporary federal parliament building was completed and federal parliament moved from Melbourne to its new home in Canberra.

1978 It was decided that a new parliament building was needed to replace the temporary building which had been used for over fifty years.

1988 The new Parliament House was opened by Queen Elizabeth 2.

Coober Pedy

The name Coober Pedy is derived from the Aboriginal words "kupa piti", which means "white man's burrow". The description is apt because most people live and work underground.

Coober Pedy is located 836 kilometres (510 miles) north of Adelaide and about 300 kilometres south of Uluru.

It is a desolate landscape devoid of vegetation and water. It is an extremely hot place too. The entire landscape is pockmarked by the telltale tailing of countless opal mines.

In 1915 a young boy named Willie Hutchison, who was out with his father prospecting for gold, discovered the first opal there. Since then the town has grown to about 2500 people.

Coober Pedy produces about 90% of the world's opals.

Because of the extreme heat during the summer almost all buildings are located underground.

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef stretches along the east coast of Queensland in Australia. It is the world's largest coral reef . It is over 2000km (1250 miles) long! It is not a single reef at all. It is made up of over 2900 individual reefs very close to each other

WHAT IS A CORAL REEF?

A coral is a tiny marine polyp. It is the living part of the coral reef. There are many different kinds of corals. These are what gives the coral reef its colourful appearance. Corals feed mostly on plankton. Coral grows in warm climates where there is clear salt water and sunlight. They don't like pollution.

A coral reef is a natural barrier made of the bodies of living and dead coral. It is normally just below the surface of the water.

It is made of two parts the:

• white part is made from the bodies of zillions and zillions of polyps which have died over hundreds and thousands of years.
• colourful part is the living part of the coral reef. It is made up of living polyps.

WHO LIVES HERE?

· 1500 species of fish

· 400 different types of coral

· 4,00 molluscs (like clams and the sea slug)

· 500 species of seaweed

· 215 species of birds

· 16 species of sea snake

· 6 species of sea turtle

· Whales visit during winter

New South Wales

New South Wales is the fourth largest state in Australia. It is 801,600 sq km in size.

About 6 million people live in New South Wales. One in three Australians lives in New South Wales.

SYDNEY

Sydney is the capital of the state of New South Wales. It is Australia's oldest and largest city. The defining symbols of Sydney are its Opera House and "coat hanger bridge".

Sydney is the commercial capital of Australia.

About 3.8 million people live in the greater Sydney area.

THE BEACH

Bondi and Manly are some of the famous beaches along the New South Wales coast a short distance from Sydney

THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

The Blue Mountains rise from the coastal plains about 65 kilometres west of Sydney. They are composed of sandstone deposited over 170 million years ago that was then pushed up to form a plateau which was subsequently eroded by wind, rain and water leaving spectacular gorges, pinnacles and cliffs. The highest point is about 1100 meters above sea level.

The towering cliffs of these mountains presented a seemly impassable barrier to early european settlers. Even today most parts are only accessible to experienced bushwalkers.

WHY ARE THEY SO BLUE?

The Blue Mountains are covered with eucalyptus trees which constantly release very fine droplets of oil into the atmosphere. These droplets cause the blue light-rays from the sun to be scattered more effectively (knows as Rayliegh Scattering) making the whole area look bluer.

Strine - Australian Slang

Australian Strine consists of words and phrases which:

· have different meanings from other English (like American English or British English),

· we have made up ourselves or

· we have borrowed from Aborigine words or from slang used by early settlers.

The Dandenongs

The Dandenong Ranges are located approximately 40 kilometers from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

HEALESVILLE SANCTUARY

The Healesville Sanctuary is a place where you can see Australian native animals in natural bushland surroundings. The sanctuary also carries out research and breeding programs for many endangered animals.

There is a real cool Koala enclosure, platypus tank and snake pit too.

Here is the official web site for the Healesville Sanctuary The Exhibits page is very good.

PUFFING BILLY RAILWAY

It is great fun riding the Puffing Billy Railway as it weaves its way up the mountains. We even get to sit on the windowsills and dangle our legs out the windows. If you look closely you can see some people doing just that. Because its a stream train you get coal dust in your eyes and on your clothes.