Australia exploration in brief. Australia. Exploring New Holland

You already know that Australia is a continent located in the Eastern and Southern hemispheres of our planet Earth. The mainland itself is part of the world of Oceania and Australia.

Geographic location of Australia

The continent called Australia covers an area of ​​7,659,861 km² in the Southern Hemisphere. The coastline has a length of 35 thousand km, the width of the continent is 4000 km, and the length reaches 3700 km.

Near Australia are islands such as Tasmania and New Guinea. The western and southern coasts of Australia are washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean, and the eastern and northern coasts by the seas of the Pacific Ocean.

These are the Timor, Coral, Arafura and Tasman seas. Also near northeast coast Australia has the largest coral reef in the world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches for more than 2,000 km. Its width can reach 150 km.

The extreme western point of the mainland is Cape Steep Point, the eastern one is Cape Byron, the northern extreme point is Cape York, and the southern tip of Australia is South Point.

To a large extent, Australia is located in a hot thermal zone, and the shores of the mainland are slightly indented. In the south of Australia is the Great Australian Bight, and the Gulf of Carpentaria is in the north, as are the two peninsulas of Cape York and Arnhem Land. Australia is connected by inland seas to Southeast Asia.

History of mainland exploration

The smallest of all, this mainland had to be searched for quite a long time. In 1606, the strait was opened, which separates New Guinea from the mainland. This strait was named after the discoverer - Torres. And in the same year, the navigator Janszon ended up on the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

A few decades later, in 1643, it was proved that Australia is a single land. The navigator Tasman proved this and he also discovered the island, which was later named after him.

In 1770, James Cook, being a famous English navigator, found himself on the east coast of Australia itself. Since then, the process of colonization by the British began, the study of Australia as a separate continent, and the economic development of its territory.

The lands of Australia became known as New South Wales. In those days, Australia became a place of exile for criminals convicted of minor infractions. Later, the settlement, considered a British colony, was named Sydney. It was founded on January 26, 1788 by Captain Arthur Philip.

And the territory of Tasmania joined the rest of the lands of Australia in 1829. The middle of the 19th century is the beginning of the "gold rush" in Australia, it is for this period that waves of mass immigration to Australia are characteristic.

In the summer of 1801/02, the naval sailor Matthew Flinders on the ship "Investigator" completed the survey of the Great Australian Bight, discovered a number of islands there (including the Investigator group, at 134 ° 30 "E) and at 136 ° E. found an entrance to another, narrow bay, which he took for a strait separating New South Wales from New Holland proper (in the west), therefore crossing the entire mainland to the Gulf of Carpentaria: so distrustfully then were the Dutch explorations of the northern coast of the mainland.But Flinders soon personally convinced that this is not a strait, but a bay (Spencer).After leaving it and following the strait (Investigator), first to the east and then to the north, Flinders was again inspired with hope, but was disappointed even more quickly: there was also a bay to the north (St. Vincent ), separated from Spencer by a narrow, boot-shaped peninsula (York), from which it emerged southeastward by another strait (Baxstairs), and at 36°S a large, hilly and wooded island (K enguroo - 4350 km), and off the coast of the mainland - a bay (Encounter), All titles in brackets are given by Flinders. He called the big island Kangaroo because of the abundance of these marsupials there, on the meat of which the entire crew of the Investigator ate. In English, "encounter" is an unexpected meeting. behind which a wide estuary was visible - the mouth of the river. Murray.

To the chagrin of the Englishman Flinders, the French ship "Geograph" of a scientific expedition under the command of a naval sailor was in the bay. Nicola Boden, who was courteous but restrained. But the more talkative researcher is a naturalist Francois Peron reported: the French had made major discoveries off the southern coast of the mainland, and he, Peron, intended to call the explored seaside strip "Napoleon Bonaparte's Land." Bodin's expedition was organized by the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1800 by order of the government to explore New Holland, part of which France claimed. In addition to the "Geographer", the expedition had at its disposal the ship "Naturalist" under the command of captain Jacques Emmanuel Amelin. The base was Fr. Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, then owned by France (under the name of Île-de-France).

At the end of May 1801, the French approached the north west bank New Holland and discovered in Shark Bay (at 26 ° S. latitude) the Peron Peninsula, and at the exit from the bay - the Straits of the Geographer and Naturalist (to the north of Derk-Hartog Island). Winter has come with winds, rains and fogs. In the fog (during a storm) the ships parted, and Boden continued shooting alone. In July, he mapped the sloping sandy shore - Aity Mile Beach, where the Great Sandy Desert rises to the ocean. Further to the northeast, he photographed a scattered group of small islands - the Bonaparte archipelago - and discovered (secondarily, after Abel Tasman) a vast bay, christening it Joseph Bonaparte. Off the coast of the Arnhemland Peninsula, Bodin discovered the Peron Islands.

There were many scurvy patients on board. For their treatment, the Geographer went to Fr. Timor, where, by agreement, the Naturalist also came. Three months later, the ships sailed from Timor and in mid-January 1802 reached Tasmania. Mass diseases of scurvy began again. Bodin had to stay there for a month, and, taking advantage of this, he made a survey of the eastern coast of the island. The French names of the objects discovered by him appeared on the map: the Freycinet Peninsula, the Oyster and a number of smaller islands, bays and peninsulas.

The French then crossed the open ocean to the southwestern tip of Australia, described the small Geographer's Bay and turned east. Soon the ships parted again; Bodin, continuing his journey, discovered Fr. Kangaroo - regardless of Flinders - and reached Encounter Bay, where he met with the British. The scurvy was getting worse, and the Geographer went to Port Jackson to treat the sick. Finding the Naturalist there, Bodin sent him to France with reports and collections, and he himself went south in mid-November 1802. He completed his round of Tasmania, repeating the work of Flinders, went to Timor, and from there to Mauritius, where in September 1803 Bodin died, and the "Geographer" with new large zoological and botanical collections returned to France.

So, almost simultaneously with the British, the French completed the discovery of Tasmania and the southern coast of Australia. The expeditions of Flinders and Boden finally proved that the Great Australian and Spencer bays are completely unconnected with the Gulf of Carpentaria, separated from it by a large expanse of land, and that, consequently, New Holland is a single mainland.

However, a small "gap" remained in the coastline of the southeastern part of the continent; all sailors missed the entrance to a very convenient large harbor. In early January 1802, this bay (Port Phillip) was discovered by an English captain John Murray. Having completed the inventory of his find, he went to sea and in the western part of the Bass Strait discovered Fr. King. (In June 1835, on the north bank of Port Phillip, a group of colonists founded a settlement that two years later became known as Melbourne.)

In 1802–1803 Flinders sailed around New Holland. He studied in detail East Coast north of 32°30"S and traced the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef There are groups of islands, reefs and a sea passage named after Flinders.- long (2300 km) ridge coral formations- reefs and islands stretching in an almost continuous chain along the eastern coast of the mainland from 22 ° 30 "S (Swain reefs) to 9 ° S ( South coast New Guinea). Flinders also examined the Torres Strait and found that a safe passage was located north of about. Prince of Wales. In order to finally destroy the legend, which he himself had previously believed, about the sea arm dividing the mainland into two parts, he again examined the Gulf of Carpentaria and compiled his first accurate map- to the Wessel Islands, near the northeastern ledge of Arnhem Land. In 1814, Flinders published the book Travel to Terra Australia. It was in it that he proposed to rename the southern mainland from New Holland to Australia; before it was Terra Australis Incognita - “Unknown Southern Land”, now it has been explored, and therefore the epithet “unknown” disappears. In the same year, 1814, Flinders died.

The discovery of the coast of Tasmania was completed by a whaler James Kelly; in the summer of 1815/16, with four companions, he circled the island on a whaleboat and discovered in the southwest and west the bays of Port Davy and Macquarie, deeply protruding into the land.

In 1817–1821 English military sailor Philip Parker King completed the study of Australia from the sea, putting on relatively accurate maps those coasts of the mainland that had previously been poorly studied. He filmed at the Mermaid tender (84 tons) in 1817–1820. and on the brig Bathurst (170 tons) in 1821. On the Mermaid in 1818–1819. swam nerd Allen Cunningham and officer John Oxley(see below), as well as an Australian bongari, a participant in both voyages of M. Flinders.

King made a new inventory of the northeastern coast of the continent from Hervey Bay (24 ° 50 "S) to Torres Strait, as well as the northern coast - from the Wessel Islands to Dampier Land. In the far north of Australia (11-12 ° S . sh.) King penetrated the vast Van Diemen Bay, discovered the Coberg Peninsula, the wooded Melville and Bathurst Islands (6200 and 2040 km²) and traced both Dundas and Clarence Straits, which separate these islands from the mainland. of the Timor Sea, he discovered the bays of Cambridge, Admiralty and Collier, and further to the south-west, at the 17th parallel, King Bay, protruding into the land for about 100 km, and thus proved that Dampier Land is a peninsula. came to the conclusion that in the north of Australia there are very wide mouths through which even the largest rivers can pour into the sea.King also specified the coastline of Western Australia from Dampier Land to Cape Luin.

The discovery of the last relatively small sections of the Australian coast is associated with the name of an English sailor John Clemens Wickham, captain of the famous ship "Beagle". Approaching the western shores of the continent in November 1837, the ship entered King Bay (the name belongs to Wickem). Officer John Lorth Stokes described on two boats southern bay, opened the mouth of the river. Fitzroy and traced the course of the river for 40 km. Having finished in March 1838 an inventory of the entire bay, the Beagle moved northeast, and in September Wickham discovered and Stokes photographed the bay, which they called Port Darwin, one of the best harbors in Australia. Returning to the southwest, Wickham and Stokes in October described another bay they discovered, the Queens Channel, with the river flowing into it. Victoria, swiftly rushing towards the ocean in high rocky shores. This find confirmed, as some geographers believed, the myth of a giant river with a huge internal delta: a map of the continent published in 1827 shows a grandiose stream about 3.4 thousand km long, collecting water from all over Australia north of the 30th parallel.

However, the study was completed - in general terms - only on the coast of Australia, and its inland regions still remained a solid "blank spot". And many years passed until dozens of researchers erased it.

Immediately after the founding of the penal colony of Port Jackson (Sydney), the officers of the convoy corps began to explore the rivers flowing to the Pacific Ocean from the nearby Blue Mountains. Start laid Arthur Phillip appointed as the first governor of New South Wales. In the middle of 1788, he, examining the Broken Bay to the north of Sydney, discovered the river flowing into the bay. The Hawkesbury and its tributaries the MacDonald and the Colo. And west of Sydney an officer Watkin Tench Then he discovered R. Nepian, which turned out to be the main source of Hawkesbury.

However, the escort officers had no incentive to explore the inland backcountry. Only 25 years later, in May 1813, a small detachment of a free colonist Gregory Blackland penetrated the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, along the valley of the river. Cox (one of the upper reaches of the Nepian - Hawkesbury), and met there vast grassy plains, quite suitable as pastures. In this area, two rivers flowed from the Blue Mountains and crossed the plain. who discovered them in 1813-1815. topographer George William Evans named the northern Macquarie River and the southern Lachlan, after the then governor of the colony Laclana Macquarie.

In 1817–1818 D. Oxley, A. Cunningham and Evans traced both rivers. It turned out that Lachlan, describing a large arc, curved to the north, then enters into a swampy lowland, in front of which the travelers stopped, and that the river. Macquarie also seems to end up in the swamps. On the way back to Sydney, they crossed several rivers flowing north, and reached the river. Namoi, flowing to the northwest. Having risen to a high plain, bordered from the south by the Liverpool ridge (length 150 km, height up to 1372 m), having crossed the ridge, they along the river. Hunter reached the ocean at the end of 1818.

In 1823, A. Cunningham, moving northwest from the Liverpool ridge, reached a large river. Barwon crossing the lowlands. The water in the river was fresh. He did not trace, however, the course of the river for a considerable distance. In 1824–1825 two free colonists, Hamilton Hume (Hume) And William Howell, with one satellite passed southwest from the Blue Mountains to the western corner of Port Phillip Bay. On this route they crossed the upper Murrumbidgee ( Big Water), flowing north here, followed along the inner, continental-facing foot of the Australian Alps (the name belongs to them) and in mid-November 1824 discovered the upper Murray (Murray) - the “Yuma River”, carrying its waters to the west, and its the left tributaries are the Owens and Goulburn. They climbed "the valley of Goulburn, clad with excellent grass" to its headwaters and rounded the southwestern spur of the Australian Alps.

In 1827, A. Cunningham explored the area north of the Liverpool Ridge. He saw a number of rivers originating in the "eastern mountains" (the New England Range, over 200 km long, up to 1510 m high) and flowing to the northwest and west, including Guaidir, McIntyre and Dumeric. Behind Dumerik, he ended up on a high plain, bounded in the north by the river. Condamine. F. P. King's map of the north coast and Cunningham's personal observations led him to the assumption that either there was a huge lake in the center of Australia, fed by the water of newly discovered rivers, or that they inevitably merge to form one or more powerful rivers that cross the continent. He even admitted that one of these great rivers might end in the northwest of Australia, in King's Bay, that is, more than 3,000 km in a straight line from the New England Ridge.

So, in 1813-1827. many streams of various capacities were discovered, carrying their waters from the marginal mountains - the Great Dividing Range, traced for 1400 km, into the depths of the mainland. The colonial government instructed an officer Charles Sturt examine their course and establish whether they are connected with each other; the possibility of their falling into the mythical inland sea was not ruled out.

Sturt had studied the work of his predecessors and knew how difficult it was to shoot in years of heavy rainfall. The year 1828, being very dry, seemed to him the most convenient for research. Accompanied by G. Hume, in November of the same year, he first went down the Macquarie Valley and found that the river was almost dry, and there were no swamps that his predecessors spoke of.

Sturt went along the dry channel, looking for a river with fresh water - Baruon (discovered in 1823 by Kannishham), and at the beginning of 1829 he stumbled upon another, as it seemed to him, and, moreover, very big river, the water in it was salty: it flowed through the saline desert. He named this river the Darling, after the then governor of New South Wales Ralph Darling.

At the end of the same year, which turned out to be rainy, Sturt began sailing in boats down the river. Lachlan, reached the relatively full-flowing Murrumbidgee, but went down to the river. Murray. He recognized in it the lower reaches of the river through which Hume and his companions crossed. Sturt swam down the Murray. And at the end of January 1830, having reached 142 ° E. he saw that a river (Darling) flows into Murray from the north, carrying fresh water. Then he got to the mouth of the Murray and found that the river poured into a shallow lagoon (Lake Alezandrina), at that time connected to Encounter Bay.

Sturt returned back to the edge mountains, going up the Murray and Murrumbidgee in boats. He made a major discovery - found out (so far, however, in the most general terms) the hydrography of Southeast Australia. Sturt described his travels in the book "Two Expeditions in the Interior of South Australia" (1833).

Of course, there was still much that was unclear. Almost nothing was known about the flow of the Murray above the mouth of the Murrumbidgee: it was not clear whether the freshwater river flowing into the Murray from the north was connected with that brackish drying stream discovered by Sturt in 1829. These important questions were resolved by a military topographer Thomas Mitchell. He assumed that the Barwan and the Darling were one and the same river, and at the end of 1831 he began his research from it. He discovered that the Darling had not one, but at least three sources (the southernmost one being Namoi). In the middle of 1835, Mitchell walked to the spot on the Darling where Sturt had found salt water, but the water was fresh that year. The following year, he inspected the southeastern region of australia, discovered between 141–142° E. the mouth of a small river (Glenelg), rose along its valley to its source. Then he headed northeast through a mountainous country (Australian Alps), covered with the highest eucalyptus trees (up to 140 m) and cut through numerous rivers. This area made such an impression on Mitchell that he named it Australia Felix ("Happy Australia").

In April 1839 landed in Sydney Pavel Edmund Strzelecki, a Polish immigrant (from the then Prussian part of Poland), a geographer and geologist by education (he graduated from Oxford University). Belonging to an impoverished count's family, he raised funds for travel by selling natural history and ethnographic collections to Western European museums. For six months he wandered through the Australian Alps, took pictures in the summer, reaching the upper Murray, which he later traced to the source, discovered a high mountain (February 15, 1840) and climbed it. “The majestic peak,” Strzelecki wrote to his homeland, “which no one had climbed before me, with its eternal snows and silence, I used to perpetuate on this mainland in the memory of future generations dear name, revered by every Pole - every friend of freedom ... In a foreign land, in a foreign land ... I called it Mount Kosciuszko.

Australian geographers assigned this name to the highest point of the mainland (2228 m), although in the 80s. and it was finally proved that Strzelecki climbed not on it, but on the neighboring peak of the Snowy Mountains, 9 m lower (Townsend, 2219 m). Named after the geographer Thomas Townsend, who explored the Australian Alps in 1846-1850.

Having crossed the southwestern spurs of the Australian Alps, Strzelecki went to the Western Port Bay, making his way through thickets and groves of eucalyptus and acacias of the southeastern seaside strip (Gipsland), the agricultural potential of which he highly appreciated.

In 1842, Strzelecki moved to Tasmania and was the first geologist to study the island. In 1845, his "Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land" was published in London. In the south of the Great Artesian Basin, north of the Flinders Ridge, there is a creek (drying river) channel about 250 km long, which Australian geographers called Strzelecki Creek - a tribute to their respect and appreciation to one of Australia's largest explorers. In 1954 and 1957, detailed biographies of P. E. Strzelecki were published in London and Warsaw.

At the beginning of 1846, while exploring the upper Darling basin, T. Mitchell discovered approximately at 28 ° S. sh. R. Balonne (in the upper reaches - Condamaine), and to the west of it - Warrego and proved that both rivers flow from the north into Darling. He traced the Warrego to its source, and with this he basically completed the discovery of the Murray-Darling river system. The length of Murray is 2570 km, that of Darling is 2740 km. The total area of ​​the Murray-Darling basin is 1160 thousand km².

1829 in the southwest of Australia, two cities were founded: at the mouth of the river. Swan (Swan) - Perth, near King George Bay - Albany. From there, in order to expand the territory of the colony, campaigns were made inland, while not very distant. First of all, the Darling Range was discovered east of Perth, and the Stirling Range, named after the founder of the colony, was discovered north of Albany. James Sterling. In the summer of 1830/31 an officer Thomas Bannister went from Perth to Albany and found that this country (the southwestern corner of Australia) is suitable for colonization.

At the beginning of 1839 an officer George Gray began exploring the western coast of Australia: he landed on an island in Shark Bay and at 25 ° S. sh. opened the mouth of the river. Gascoigne. Soon, during a storm, the party lost most of its provisions. Gray went south by sea in three boats, but beyond the 28th parallel he was wrecked in a bay where a relatively large river (Murchison) flowed. The rest of the journey to Perth - about 500 km - had to be walked along the coast, which made a more favorable impression on Gray than on his sailor predecessors, but this was not confirmed by further research.

In 1836, the city of Adelaide arose on the shores of St. Vincent Bay - the center South Australia. It became the starting point for expeditions, the purpose of which was mainly in search of pastures. In May 1839 a sheep breeder Edward John Eyre, exploring the coastal strip near the Spencer Bay, discovered the almost meridional Flinders Range with heights up to 1189 m, to the west of it - the salt lake Torrens (up to 5.7 thousand km²). In July of the same year, while exploring the Eyre Peninsula near Spencer Bay, a sheep breeder discovered the low Goler Ridge in its northern part.

At the end of July 1840, passing north from Spencer Bay, Eyre found that Lake Torrens had turned into a salt marsh. Farther north, he discovered another salt lake, which he considered an extension of Torrens. From one of the peaks of the ridge, Flinders Air saw to the east a large salt marsh, which he also took to be part of the huge "horseshoe-shaped" Torrens. In 1843, E. Frome proved the fallacy of this assumption: after walking along the eastern slope of the ridge, he became convinced that the salt lake Frome (2–3 thousand km²) was an isolated basin. Later (in 1858-1860) it was established that this is a separate body of water, called Lake Eyre (up to 15 thousand km²). Returning to the sea, Air with a small detachment went along the shore to the west, receiving from another detachment sailing on a ship water and food supplies: on land in this desert strip it was impossible to get either food or water. Eyre stopped at 132°30" E and sent the ship to Spencer Bay for provisions and fresh water. The ship returned to him at the end of January 1841, but Eyre headed shore further west only a month later, reducing the number of satellites to five three of them died by July 27, when he arrived in King George's Bay (at 118 ° E.) During this four-month passage, Air and a young Australian Wylie traveled over 2000 km, for the most part through a completely waterless desert, along a plain, behind which the name Nullarbor (Latin - "Not a single tree"), in the English pronunciation of Nullarbor, has stuck.

At the end of 1848 the topographer Augustus Gregory, passing from Perth directly to the north for about 500 km. discovered and explored the river basin. Murchison. He tried to advance from its middle course to the northwest, to Shark Bay, but retreated before the desert. In 1852 he tried again and this time reached Shark Bay.

40th years in the east of Australia, a relatively wide strip was explored - from the Southern Tropic to Gippsland, while to the west of the Darling basin, all inland areas remained "white spots". In the south, only the seaside strip and partly the region of large salt lakes were known, in the west, only the southwestern corner of the mainland and a narrow coastal strip to the river. Gascoigne included. Most of Western Australia, Central and Northern Australia were still "unknown lands".

In October 1844, a naturalist in the service of the government of New South Wales, a German Ludwig Leichhardt went at the head of the expedition from Brisbane across the river. Condamaine to the Gulf of Carpentaria. On this route, in November 1844 - February 1845, the expedition discovered the Dawson and Mackenzie Rivers with the latter's largest tributaries (Komet and Isaac) and their watersheds (Expedition and Peak Ranges). But Leichhardt did not trace Dawson and Mackenzie to their confluence and did not know that they constituted the r. Fitzroy (total length of Dawson - Fitzroy 960 km). Further north in March - April 1845, the expedition discovered and explored the second basin major river, current in Pacific Ocean, - Berdekin (560 km).

Having crossed the northern section of the Great Dividing Range, traced by him for at least 400 km, Leichhardt and his companions along the valleys of the Lind and Mitchell rivers descended to the Gulf of Carpentaria in early July. And in July - October, they bypassed the entire southern coastal strip of the bay, opening the lower reaches of a number of rivers, including the Gilbert and Roper. Leichhardt assigned the names of his English companions to these significant rivers - the naturalist John Gilbert And John Roper. He did not forget his youngest comrades: on detailed maps Northern Australia shown, for example, Calvert and Murphy Mountains, in honor of the 19-year-old James Calvert and 15 year old John Murphy. He only offended himself: p. Likehart and Likeheart Ridge (as the English pronounce his surname) are named after him by other explorers of Australia. Following then to the northwest, the expedition crossed the Arnhemland peninsula and in mid-December 1845 reached Van Diemen Bay and the northern coast of the Koberg peninsula, to the military settlement of Port Essington. For fourteen and a half months, Leichhardt traveled more than 4 thousand km, mainly in unexplored areas. To New South Wales all returned by sea. Leichhardt became the first explorer of the huge regions of Australia, later called Queensland and the Northern Territory. The materials of his expedition were published in 1847.

In December 1847, Leichhardt left Brisbane at the head of a new expedition, intending to cross the Australian mainland in three years. He proceeded through the Darling Valley along the river. Bark, from where he sent the last news (received April 3, 1847). Then the entire expedition (9 people) went missing. It wasn't until four years later that the anxiety in Sydney began. A number of search parties were sent from 1852 to 1869, but no trace of the travelers could be found.

After the founding of the colony of South Australia, C. Sturt went to serve there. The primary task of the colony, which was inhabited only by free people, was the development of cattle breeding. Air found only deserts and semi-deserts, but he did not go far north into Central Australia, the nature of which was completely unknown. Judgments about it were expressed only on guesses, and there were all sorts of guesses. Sturt himself, studying the movements of birds in South Australia, drew the wrong conclusion that during the dry season they fly to the center of the mainland and that there, therefore, there are abundant sources of irrigation.

In August 1844, Sturt, leading a government expedition, set out from Adelaide in search of new pastures. On a special mission, he went first to the northeast, to the lower Darling, to Lake Menindee (32 ° 30 "S), from there he turned north, and at 30 ° S - to the north-west. On way in January 1845, he crossed not high mountains(the southern spur of the Gray Ridge), buried one of his companions, James Poole, in this “large stone desert”, and went out onto a plain intersected by the channels of the drying rivers - Strzelecki Creek and Barka (lower arms of the large Coopers Creek, about 1400 km long ). To the north of Lake Eyre, travelers reached almost the center of the mainland, to the Simpson Desert. On the eastern edge of the desert, on the middle reaches of the river. Mulligan (near 25° S), Sturt was forced to retreat due to lack of water. The expedition returned to Adelaide in early 1846. Sturt described this journey in the two-volume Tale of an Expedition to Central Australia (1849).

In September 1855, O. Gregory began work in the north-west of Australia with a study of the high-water and swift river in the rainy season. Victoria (570 km), which flows into southeastern part Joseph Bonaparte Bay, passed from its upper reaches to Sturt Creek and traced it to the northern edge of the Great Sandy Desert. The river flowed into a small salt lake - and the hope of opening a large reservoir in the center of the mainland evaporated. This route revealed the eastern limit of the Kimberley Plateau. Returning to the river Victoria, O. Gregory, moving mainly to the southeast, reached the Pacific Ocean at 24 ° S in 1856. sh. (against Father Curtis). He thus made the first crossing of the mainland in a southeasterly direction and established in general terms the relief of Northern Australia. True, he did not move more than 500 km from the coast of the sea.

In 1858, O. Gregory went in search of Leichhardt from Brisbane to the northeast to the point from which Leichhardt sent the last letter. Finding nothing, he descended the valley of Cooper's Creek and Strzelecki Creek to the Flinders Ridge and, following its eastern foot, came to Adelaide. So he crossed Australia for the second time, now in a southwestern direction, and in the Coopers Creek basin he moved almost 900 km from the sea, but still did not reach Central Australia.

In 1857–1861 Francis Gregory, brother of Augustus, made four trips to the northern part of Western Australia. He successively discovered there, between 20 and 28°S. sh., the rivers De Grey, Fortescue, Ashburton and the Hamersley mountain range extending south of Fortescue. Its length is 250 km; Mount Brus (1235 m) is the highest point in Western Australia. Based on the materials of his travels, F. Gregory compiled a schematic geological map of the territory to the west of 120 ° E. to the Indian Ocean, between 20 and 28 ° S. sh.

In 1879 Alexander Forrest, leading a large expedition, for the first time explored the dissected Kimberley Plateau (about 270 thousand km²) in the north-west of Australia, and discovered and traced the King Leopold Range (length 230 km, peak 937 m) in its southern part.

After the discovery of the richest gold placers in South-Eastern Australia and the founding of a separate colony of Victoria south of Murray (1851) in Melbourne, its new capital, a Geographical Society arose with large funds. The Society organized a large expedition in 1858 with the task of reconnoitring the most convenient dry route from Victoria to the northern edge of the mainland and finding a route for the trans-Australian telegraph. An Irishman was appointed head of the expedition Robert O'Hara Burke, from 1853 he served as a police inspector of the new colony. Burke had no special education, and, by the nature of his previous work, he was completely unprepared to lead a geographical expedition of this type. However, its initiators and some of Burke's companions are more guilty than he is of tragic outcome enterprises. For some unknown reason, the Melbourne society suggested that he make a round-trip crossing of the mainland, instead of taking the expedition by sea to Melbourne from the northern coast. It should be noted that Burke was the first in Australia and quite expediently used not only horses, but also camels brought from Afghanistan to move through the desert.

On August 20, 1860, the expedition left Adelaide to the north. Along the way, Burke set up two food depots on the lower Darling (near Lake Menindee) and on Coopers Creek. Then he and the medic William John Wiele(as an astronomer) with two satellites crossed Central Australia, following mainly up the bed of the Diamantina creek, crossed the Selwyn ridge and along the river valley. Flinders descended to the Gulf of Carpentaria in early February 1861, completing the first meridional crossing of Australia.

Immediately, Burke, acting on instructions, moved back, fearing that he would not have enough food to reach the nearest base. People and animals were very emaciated. In mid-April, one of Burke's companions died. This misfortune delayed the detachment for a day, which cost the lives of two more. When the travelers reached the food base on Cooper Creek, it turned out that the day before they arrived, the head of the base had evacuated it, leaving "just in case" only a note and very little food. Later, he justified himself by saying that he had been waiting for Burke and his companions for a long time and decided that all four were dead.

When the travelers moved from the base, they had only two camels left - the rest of the animals had fallen earlier. The camels were shot, and three of them ate their meat for some time. The occasional Australians provided some assistance to the Europeans, but they themselves had very few supplies. A few weeks later, a completely exhausted Wills fell behind, and the next day Burke also died. The fourth participant in the campaign, almost dying of hunger John King picked up by the Australians in the lower reaches of Coopers Creek, where he was found by a rescue team sent from Melbourne Alfred Howitt. Wills' diary survives, the only reliable source of information about Burke's campaign north of second base.

The search parties, which came out from the east and north, traced the channels of Diamantina, Coopers Creek to their sources, as well as a number of rivers flowing into the southeastern part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In 1861, he went from there to the southwest William Landsborough. He discovered the Barclay Plateau In 1877, Nathaniel Buchanan climbed the Barclay Plateau and discovered that it was covered with savannah with valuable fodder grasses. and passed southeast along its steep northern bluff and the Selwyn ridge to the Great Dividing Range, and then followed Thomson Creek to its mouth (the Coopers Creek system).

Since 1860, attempts to cross Australia began a colonist and explorer-Scot John McDwell Stuart(companion of Sturt in 1844–1845). The first was unsuccessful, but at the end of June it nevertheless reached 19°S. sh., opening the central mountain range McDonnell, to the north of it is the Stewart Bluff ("Stewart's Ledge") ridge, and behind it are the small ridges of Davenport and Murchison. Stewart tried again at the end of November 1860. It was again unsuccessful, although this time (end of May 1861) he reached Newcastle Creek, which flows into the salt lake of the Woods (at 17 ° 30 "S). Stewart was less than 300 km to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but not expecting to find supplies there (he had few of them left), he returned to Adelaide.

In December 1861, Stewart marched north for the third time, reached Lake Woods and found his way to the sea north of the river. Newcastle Creek through the scrub (scrub), which previously seemed impassable to him, - along Birdem Creek, a small southern tributary of the river. Roper. From Roper, he moved northwest to the river. Adelaide and along it went to Van Diemen Bay at the end of July 1862, having made the second meridional crossing of Australia. His route was soon used - with slight deviations in both directions - for laying the trans-Australian telegraph. With legitimate pride, Stuart wrote that he led his entire detachment safe and sound from sea to sea. Strongly, of course, exaggerating, he praised Northern Australia as "the most wonderful country that man has ever seen." His last expedition was also of great agricultural importance. She found that in some interior areas of Northern Australia there are vast areas that can be used by pastoralists.

The western interior of Australia remained completely unexplored. The "storm" of these deep regions began in 1869 from the west. renting officer John Forrest left Perth in mid-April at the head of a small well-armed cavalry detachment. Having traveled in general to the northeast for almost 2 thousand km (of which about a thousand in unexplored terrain) through the desert region of Central Australia with numerous salt lakes and isolated hills, Forrest reached almost 123 ° E in early July. at 29°S sh. From there he turned back. Of the salt lakes he discovered, three turned out to be relatively large - Barley, Salt Lakes and Monger.

Other explorers continued their "assault" from the line of the trans-Australian telegraph: they went from Adelaide to one of the stations in the center of the mainland, and then penetrated into the desert in a westerly direction. In the summer of 1872/73 Ernest Giles And William Goss, advancing on horseback along the parallel of 24 ° S. sh., discovered the George Giles Range (at 132 ° E), and to the south-west of it - the drying up salt lake Amadies. Giles tried to go further, but stopped in front of a sandy desert. In the summer of 1873/74 Giles, Goss and Alfred Gibson on horseback they went west from the telegraph office along the 26th parallel and discovered the Musgrave Range (about 200 km long) with a peak of 1440 m (at 131 ° 30 "E). From there they proceeded to the northwest and penetrated to 125 ° east, opening on the way the Peterman Range (length 180 km, peak 1219 m), and the Gibson sandy desert, where A. Gibson died looking for water.

In the middle of 1873 Peter Warburton, previously (in 1856) exploring Lake Torrens, passed from the ridge. McDonnell to the head of Sturt Creek (at 20° S), and from there turned west. Warburton first crossed the Great sandy desert; he went to the headwaters of the river. De Grey. He then crossed the headwaters of a series of creeks and ended up at Nicol Bay (20°30"S).

D. Forrest remained true to "his" direction. In autumn (April) 1874, he climbed up the valley of the river. Murchison, finding it quite suitable for cattle breeding, turned east and walked through the semi-deserts between 25-26 ° S. sh. from one drying up source to another, through a chain of salt lakes: in winter (in August) he crossed the desert strip by chance at its narrowest point - between the Gibson and Great Victoria deserts - and reached Mt. Musgrave, and from him went down the valley of the river. Albergi to the telegraph line (at the end of September). Forrest often climbed the hills closest to the route line and surveyed the area to the north and south. According to his observations, in both directions, as far as the eye could see, stretched a flat, sometimes slightly undulating country with sandy hills overgrown with spinifex grass; sometimes it was just an ocean of spinifex. He came to the conclusion that the interior regions of Western Australia he had explored were completely unsuitable for European colonization.

In 1875, E. Giles, keeping approximately the 30th parallel, penetrated from the telegraph line to the west, into the Great Victoria Desert (the name is given to them), and crossed it; then passing through a chain of drying lakes, he at Lake Moore (117 ° 30 "E) turned southwest to the Indian Ocean at Perth. From there Giles in January 1876 headed north to the headwaters of Ashburton, and from 24 ° S moved to the center of the mainland and, keeping mainly to the 24th parallel, crossed the Gibson Desert from west to east, before which he retreated in 1874. His conclusions regarding the nature of the interior of Western Australia generally coincided with the opinion of John Forrest Giles covered more than 8,000 km on horseback between 1875 and 1876. He was the author of five books, including Geographic Travels in Australia (1875), Diary of a Forgotten Expedition (1880) and the two volume Australia, Twice Crossed ... "(1889).

Thus, from 1872 to 1876, a giant desert strip between 20–30°S was discovered and crossed by several routes. sh., which is conditionally divided into three deserts: Bolshaya Peschanaya (in the north), Gibson (in the center), Greater Victoria(on South). After that, only relatively small “white spots” remained unexplored in Inner Australia, which were eliminated in the 20th century.

Thanks to the efforts of many expeditions, three main myths were dispelled, which largely determined the course of the discovery and study of Australia. The opinion about the presence of a meridional strait, allegedly dividing the entire continent into two halves, was the first to be refuted. Then it was the turn of the legend of the giant river to disappear. And finally, it turned out that in the center of Australia there is no inland sea or lakes. However, instead of this mythical reservoir, underground lakes and even a sea of ​​\u200b\u200bfresh water were discovered.

The study of the Australian artesian basins was started by a meteorologist Henry Russell, who studied the Darling basin from 1869. In 1878 Ralph Tate discovered artesian waters in the area of ​​Lake Eyre. Then Russell in August 1879 made an article. In it, he argued that the artesian basin in New South Wales extends west of the watershed mountains from the river. Lachlan north to the river. Dumerik, i.e. to the border with Queensland.

In 1895, geologist Edward Pitman dated underground aquifers to Triassic porous sandstones, common in the upland part of New South Wales in a strip up to 700 km wide. By 1914, Pitman had outlined the entire Great Artesian Basin and characterized it in his book The Great Australian Artesian Basin and Its Water Sources. The basin extends from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the south for 2000 km, its width is 700–1800 km, and the area is more than 1700 thousand km² (the second in the world after the West Siberian).

30s 19th century an English navy and hydrograph worked off the northeastern coast of Australia Francis Price Blackwood. In 1842 he returned to these waters as the captain of the Fly. For more than two years, Blackwood directed hydrographic work in the western reef-strewn strip of the Coral Sea, between the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef, explored this reef throughout its entire length, looking for the safest passages between its parts. He was the first to plot on an accurate map near the Southern Tropic the wide Capricorn Strait, the reefs fringing it, including the Capricorn Islands and the Swain Reefs, at 21 ° S. sh. - Cumberland Islands, between 16°40" and 9°20"S sh. - the outer (eastern) line of reefs for more than 900 km, to the southern coast of New Guinea. Expedition member geologist Joseph Beat Jukes compiled the first scientific description of the Great Barrier Reef (published in 1847).

At the beginning of 1845, having passed through the Northeast Passage into the Gulf of Papua, Blackwood first described this bay, and discovered the estuary of the large river. Fly, named after his ship. From there, Blackwood passed through the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea to the North Australian peninsula Koberg, delivered from Port Essington to Singapore a team of two ships (70 people) wrecked in the Torres Strait, moved to Sydney and at the end of 1845 returned to England.

Among the hydrographers are the explorers of the Australian seas of the 40s. young sailor stands out Owen Stanley, an excellent draftsman who illustrated both his own and others' reports. In 1847–1849 patient with epilepsy. O. Stanley, commanding the old ship "Rattlesnake" ("Rattlesnake"), again worked in Australian waters mainly in the Torres Strait region. His most important achievement was a detailed inventory of the southeast coast of New Guinea and adjacent islands to the Louisiade archipelago: his maps (published in 1855) were used until 1955. Work in very difficult conditions - eternal anxiety on an "old vessel" in dangerous waters - so undermined by the poor health of O. Stanley that, having barely reached Sydney (1850), he died on board the ship at the age of 39. Later, the Owen-Stanley ridge was named after him, stretching for 250 km along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Papua (top 4035 m), traced by him along its entire length.

about the second half of the 19th century, when preparations were intensively made for the division of Oceania between the imperialists and the mass extermination of its indigenous inhabitants took place, the voice of the great Russian humanist sounded in their defense to the whole world. Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay As a 19-year-old boy in 1866, as an assistant to the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, he sailed to Madeira and the Canary Islands, and visited Morocco. In 1869 he visited the shores of the Red Sea and Asia Minor to study the lower marine animals. But he was drawn to unexplored areas not yet visited by Europeans.

And he chooses the northeast coast of New Guinea. At the request of the Russian Geographical Society in 1870, he was delivered there - around South America - on the screw corvette "Vityaz" under the command Pavel Nikolaevich Nazimov and landed in September 1871 on the coast of New Guinea to the east of Astrolabe Bay - later called the Miklouho-Maclay coast. Corvette officers discovered and described the Vityaz Strait between this coast and about. Long Island. Miklukho-Maclay lived on “his” shore until December 1872, studying the language, manners and customs of the Papuans, and won their love and trust with patience, restraint, truthfulness and cordial attitude. At the beginning of 1873, he was followed by the screw clipper Izumrud under the command of Mikhail Nikolayevich Kumani. The officers described the Emerald Strait, which separates about. Karkar from New Guinea.

On a Russian clipper ship, Miklukho-Maclay went to the Philippines, and from there he crossed to Java. In 1874 he sailed on a Dutch ship to Sulawesi, Timor and the Moluccas. From there, on a Malayan sailboat (“prau”), he crossed to the western coast of New Guinea, explored it, sailed again to the Moluccas and Sulawesi and returned to Java, where he lived until 1875. Then Miklouho-Maclay explored the interior of the Malay Peninsula. In 1876–1877 he again visited New Guinea, lived on "his" coast and collected valuable anthropological and ethnographic collections. On the basis of his observations, Miklouho-Maclay came to the conclusion about the species unity and kinship of human races, destroying the anti-scientific idea of ​​supposedly existing "lower" and "higher" races.

At the end of 1877, Miklukho-Maclay went on an English schooner to Singapore, where, due to a serious illness, he remained for more than six months. In 1878 he moved to Sydney. In 1879–1880 he sailed from there to New Caledonia and other islands of Melanesia, continuing anthropological research, and visited the southern coast of New Guinea. Returning to Australia, he launched a campaign against the slave trade, which was widespread in Melanesia. In 1881 he again visited the southern coast of New Guinea with a punitive expedition in an English corvette. Thanks to his intercession, the corvette commander refused to burn the Papuan village and massacre its inhabitants. In 1882, Miklukho-Maclay returned to St. Petersburg through the Suez Canal, thus completing the circumnavigation begun on the Vityaz in 1870.

He did not live long in his homeland. In 1883 he went to Australia, then to Java. There Miklukho-Maclay accidentally caught the Russian corvette "Skobelev" (former "Vityaz"). His commander Vadim Vasilyevich Blagodev delivered the traveler to the shore of Miklouho-Maclay. Corvette officers described the northwestern part of Astrolabe Bay and discovered Alexei Bay and a number of small islands there, the largest of which Blagodev named Fr. Skobelev.

After spending some time among Papuan friends, Miklukho-Maclay returned to Australia, lived there until 1886, then moved with his family to St. Petersburg, but died a year later (1887). He left a great scientific and literary legacy. His most important works were published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Collected Works. In 5 volumes, 1950–1954). He became one of the favorite heroes of the Soviet youth. Books about him are published and republished in the USSR.

Enue naturalist Luigi Maria Albbertis in 1876, at the head of a party of 11 people, he climbed on a steam boat provided to him by the authorities of New South Wales, along the river. Fly, the mouth of which was opened by Blackwood, 800 km from the sea. All along this river. The fly that crossed the vast lowland was navigable. In mid-June, in the north, Albertis saw a high mountain range (up to 3860 m) - the Victor-Emanuil ridge. He described his travels in the two-volume book "On New Guinea" (1880), from which it is clear that he spoke with the Papuans "from a position of strength" and not all of his shots were on game or in the sky.

In 1872–1874 the southeastern part of New Guinea was surveyed by an English naval sailor John Moresby on the Basilisk ship. To the west of the Louisiade archipelago, he discovered a group of small islands and the passage of Goshen between the D "Antrkasto Islands and the ledge of New Guinea. To the north of the Yuon Moresby Bay, he saw the high Saruwaged Mountains (top 4107 m); their northwestern continuation is the Finistere Range. In the Gulf of Papua, he found the most convenient harbor, named after his father, Admiral Port Moresby.

In November 1884, Eastern New Guinea was divided into two parts: the northern part was captured by the Germans; southern - the British, who declared it a protectorate and named Papua.

Otto Finsch, a German merchant-turned-zoologist, visited New Guinea, acting on behalf of the German New Guinea Company, which established a colony in the northeastern part of the island. In total, he made five voyages along the northern coast of New Guinea. In May 1885, Finsch discovered the river on a large green and lemon spot in the sea. Sepik, the largest water artery of the new colony (length 1300 km), and went up the river for about 50 km. In the lower reaches, it flowed through a swampy plain. In the distance to the south, Finsch saw a mountain range, named it after Bismarck. Finsch also explored a large archipelago in the New Guinea Sea, christened by the Germans the Bismarck Archipelago.

In 1887 geographer and astronomer Carl Schrader went up the river Sepik at 1100 km. In the south, he saw relatively high (up to 2880 m) mountains - the Central Range. The opening of a convenient road to the interior of the central part of New Guinea was another achievement of Schrader. In 1910, a German-Dutch border commission rose along this path to the upper reaches of the river near the 141st meridian. And two years later, the Germans conducted extensive studies of the river basin. Sepik, explored a number of its southern tributaries and, along one of them (the April River), penetrated into central part the Central Range. One of the expedition members, entomologist Richard Turnwald, rose to the sources of the river. Sepik discovered the ridge named after him and thus established the western boundary of the Central Range.

Among the explorers of the new British protectorate stood out Captain Henry Charles Everill, who discovered in 1885 Strickland - the largest tributary of the river. Fly and the governor William McGregor- in 1889 - 1890. he traced the course of the river. Fly, almost 1000 km from the mouth, discovered and examined part of its upper tributary, the Palmer.

The Dutch, who captured the western part of Pova Guinea, were late in exploring its interior. Only in 1905 they examined the slow river. Digul is almost 550 km from the mouth. A year later, a military detachment with the participation of two naturalists conducted a study of a number of other rivers flowing through the central lowland, including the river. Lorentz, and examined the wide river. Eilanden. The detachment continued to study the river. Digul, now its two major tributaries, having completed familiarization with the central lowland. Both the southern group and the war parties operating from the northern coast of New Guinea were stopped by a powerful ridge with high peaks(mountains Maoke). They were first reached by Lieutenant F. Van der Ven: near 139°E he discovered several snowy peaks and met a group of pygmies.

The Dutch began to explore the northern coast of New Guinea in 1883, having familiarized themselves with downstream R. Mamberamo. They began a detailed study of its basin in 1909. At the end of that year, a military detachment under the command of Captain Fransen Herdersche, having overcome the two thresholds of the river, which made its way into the latitudinal mountains of Van Pec, in mid-February 1910, he discovered a "lake-plain" formed by the confluence of two components of the river. Mamberamo. Herdershe chose the western branch (R. Tariku) and along its valley he climbed into the mountains almost to the line of eternal snows. Malaria, which knocked down most of the porters, forced the Dutch to turn back.

In 1913–1914 a large party led by a captain I. Opperman, conducted a more detailed acquaintance with the river basin. Mamberamo, divided into two groups. One reached the head of the river. Tariku and examined its southern tributaries. Another surveyed the entire course of the river. Taritatu, the eastern component of Mamberamo, rose to the sources of its two main tributaries, including the river. Sobger. Thus, the Dutch discovered and explored the northern slopes of the Maoke Mountains for more than 500 km.

Web design © Andrey Ansimov, 2008 - 2014

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Omsk State Pedagogical University

Department of Physical Geography

Geographers - explorers of Australia.

Essay

Performed: student

Faculty of Geography

group 16 Zakharova Evgeniya

Checked: teacher

Departments of Physical Geography

Balashenko Valentina Ivanovna

Omsk 2003

Plan:

1. Introduction

2. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros

3. Willem Janszoon

4. Abel Tasman

5. James Cook

6. Flinders Matthew

7. Sturt Charles

8. Stuart John McDual

9. Leichhardt Ludwig

10 Burke Robert O'Hara

11. Sir John Forrest

12. Conclusion

13. References

Introduction

At the beginning of the 17th century, in the Southern Hemisphere, the ghost of the greatest continent, Australia of the Holy Spirit, began to take on more and more clear outlines. Often real geographical achievements were not committed suddenly and not by one specific person. So the discovery of Australia did not happen immediately, and many sailors took part in this enterprise.

Long before the discovery of Australia by James Cook, it was dreamed and dreamed about. The fact is that scientists argued that the fourth continent is necessary in order to maintain the balance of the Earth, but the people hoped to find gold, pearls, spices or some other unprecedented riches there. So they searched for Australia for a long time.
And there at that time the aborigines lived quietly, optimistically looked at the world and believed that man and nature are one, and their totems (animals, plants or natural phenomena with which they identified themselves) will protect from any troubles and misfortunes. However, in 1770, James Cook solemnly sailed on his ship along the east coast of "New Earth", named it New South Wales and declared it the property of the British crown. Interestingly, in fact, a certain Dutchman Willem Janszon sailed to the shores of Australia a little earlier, however, he did not appreciate the merits of the lands found, therefore, apparently, he was not appreciated as a discoverer. On the other hand, it must be said that the British crown assessed these lands in a rather peculiar way - they decided to organize prison settlements there. And they organized it!
By the beginning of the 40s of the last century, the construction of the continent had achieved noticeable success. Life in Australia had become quite bearable, and sending convicts there lost all meaning.
Since 1840, a stream of free settlers has poured in there. Australians today are very proud of their convict ancestors: this is prestigious. They look at the descendants of decent great-grandfathers somewhat condescendingly.

Pedro Fernandez de Quiros (1565-1614)

Belief in the existence of another continent prompted the Spaniard Mendanya to leave America for southern part Pacific Ocean, where he discovered some of the Marshalls and Solomon Islands and Ellis Islands.
The young captain and helmsman Pedro Fernandez de Quiros (1565-1614), who also believed in the existence of the southern mainland, participated in his second expedition.
Quiros was only thirty years old when he went to Peru and received a place as captain and chief helmsman of Mendanha. The expedition consisted of three hundred and seventy-eight people stationed on four ships. Unfortunately, Mendanya took his wife and a crowd of relatives with him.
Kyros, who at first hesitated whether to take part in the expedition, soon became convinced that his doubts were well founded. Senora Mendanya, an arrogant and power-hungry woman, handled all the affairs, and the head of the military detachment turned out to be a rude and tactless person.
But Kyros decided not to pay attention to anything and continued to faithfully fulfill his duties.
On July 26, 1595, sailors saw an island at a distance of approximately 4200 kilometers from Lima, which they called Magdalena. When about four hundred natives came in canoes to the ships and brought coconuts and fresh water for exchange, the Spanish soldiers turned this friendly visit into a massacre that ended in a stampede of the natives. Such cases were repeated more than once in the future. In 1605, 3 ships under the command of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros left Callao in search of the southern mainland. The expedition discovered the land, which they took for the southern mainland and called Australia Espirito Santo. Subsequently, it turned out that it was an island from the New Hebrides group. In the middle of 1606, during a storm, two ships lost sight of the Kyros ship and continued sailing under the command of Luis Vaez de Torres. The ships passed along the southern coast of New Guinea, separating it from the southern mainland, but information about this was buried in the secret archives of Spain.

Janszoon Willem . Dutch navigator of the 17th century. In 1606, he discovered Australia (the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula). In 1605, the Dutch navigator Willem Janszon on the Deifken ship "discovered a vast landmass in the southern Indian Ocean called Zeidlandt (Southern Land), which began to be considered part of the Southern Continent. At the beginning of 1606, Janszon turned southeast, crossing the Arafura Sea and approached the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula in the Gulf of Carpentaria.Of course, these names were given later, and then the Dutch made the first documented landing on the coast of unfamiliar land.Then "Dreyfken" sailed south along the flat desert coast, reached the cape on June 6, 1606 Kerver. In Albatros Bay, the crew first encountered the natives. There was a skirmish in which several people were killed on both sides. Continuing the voyage, Janszon traced and mapped approximately 350 kilometers

coastline of the Cape York Peninsula to its extreme northern tip and called this part of the peninsula New Guinea, believing that it is a continuation of this island.

Abel Tasman(1603-1659). In 1642, the governor-general of the Dutch Indies, Van Diemen, decided to establish whether Australia was part of the southern mainland and whether New Guinea connected with it, and also to find a new road from Java to Europe. Van Diemen found a young captain, Abel Tasman, who, having gone through many trials, won the fame of an excellent connoisseur of the sea. Van Diemen gave him detailed instructions where to go and how to act.
Abel Tasman was born in 1603 in the vicinity of Groningen in a poor family, he independently mastered the letter and, like many of his countrymen, connected his fate with the sea. In 1633, he appeared in Batavia and, on a small ship of the East India Company, went around many of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In 1636, Tasman returned to Holland, but two years later he was back in Java. Here in 1639 Van Diemen organized an expedition to northern part Pacific Ocean. It was headed by an experienced sailor Mattis Quast. The skipper on the second ship was appointed Tasman.
Quast and Tasman had to find mysterious islands, allegedly discovered by the Spaniards east of Japan; these islands on some Spanish maps bore the tempting names "Rico de oro" and "Rico de I" ("rich in gold" and "rich in silver").
The expedition did not justify Van Diemen's hopes, but she explored the Sean waters and reached Kuril Islands. During this voyage, Tasman proved himself to be a brilliant helmsman and an excellent “mandir. Scurvy killed almost the entire crew, but he managed to lead the ship from the coast of Japan to Java, withstanding the fierce attacks of the typhoon along the way.
Van Diemen showed considerable interest in Zeidlandt, and he was not disappointed by the failures of the expedition of Gerrit Pohl. In 1641 he decided to send to this land new expedition and appointed Tasmana as its commander. Tasman had to find out whether Zeidlandt was part of the Southern Continent, how far it extended to the south, and to find out the paths leading from it to the east, into the still unknown seas of the western part of the Pacific Ocean.
Tasman supplied detailed instruction, which summarized the results of all voyages made in the waters of Seidlandt and the Western Pacific Ocean. This instruction has survived, and Tasman's daily records have survived, which allow us to restore the entire route of the expedition. The company gave him two ships: a small warship "Heemskerk" and a fast flute (cargo ship) "Sehain". One hundred people took part in the expedition.
The ships left Batavia on August 14, 1642 and arrived on the island of Mauritius on September 5. On October 8, they left the island and headed south, and then south-southeast. On November 6, they reached 49 ° 4 "south latitude, but could not move further south due to a storm. Member of the expedition

Vischer proposed sailing to 150° east longitude, adhering to 44° south latitude, and then sailing east along 44° south latitude to 160° east longitude.
Under the southern coast of Australia, Tasman thus passed 8-10 ° south of the Neates route, leaving the Australian mainland far to the north. He followed east at a distance of 400-600 miles from the southern coast of Australia and at 44 ° 15 "south latitude and 147 ° 3" east longitude noted in his diary: "... all the time the excitement comes from the southwest, and, although everyday we saw floating algae, we can assume that in the south there is no mainland..." This was an absolutely correct conclusion: the nearest land south of the Tasman route - Antarctica - lies south of the Antarctic Circle.
On November 24, 1642, a very high bank was noticed. It was southwest coast Tasmania, an island that Tasman considered part of the Zeidlandt and called Van Diemen's Land. It is not easy to establish which part of the coast the Dutch sailors saw that day, because the maps of Vischer and another member of the Gilsemans expedition differ significantly from each other. The Tasmanian geographer J. Walker believes that it was a mountainous coast north of Macquarie Bay - Harbor.
On December 2, sailors landed on the shores of Van Diemen's Land. “On our boat,” Tasman writes, “there were four musketeers and six rowers, and each had a lance and a weapon at his belt ... Then the sailors brought various greens (they saw it in abundance); some varieties were similar to nata, that grow on the cape Good Hope... They rowed for four miles to a high cape, where all kinds of greenery grew on flat areas, not planted by man, but existing from God, and there were fruit trees in abundance, and in wide valleys there are many streams, to which , however, is difficult to reach, so you can only fill a flask with water.
The sailors heard some sounds, something like the playing of a horn or the blows of a small gong, and this noise was heard nearby. But they didn't see anyone. They noticed two trees, 2-2 1/2 fathoms thick and 60-65 feet high, and the trunks were cut with sharp stones and the bark was torn off here and there, and this was done in order to get to the birds' nests. The distance between the notches is five feet, therefore, it can be assumed that the people here are very tall. We saw traces of some animals, similar to the prints of the claws of a tiger; (sailors) brought the excrement of a four-legged beast (so they believed) and some fine resin that seeped out of these trees and had the aroma of humilak ... There were many herons and wild geese off the coast of the cape ... "
Leaving the anchorage, the ships moved further north and on December 4 passed the island, which was named the island of Mary in honor of Van Diemen's daughter. Passing by the islands of Schaugen and the Frey-sine peninsula (Tasman decided that this was an island), the ships reached 4-34 "south latitude on December 5. The coast turned to the north-west, and the ships could not move in this direction due to headwinds. Therefore, it was decided was to leave coastal waters and go east.
Tasman on his map connected the coast of Van Diemen's Land with the Earth

Abel Tasman Abel Tasman (Dutch Abel Janszoon Tasman, * October 1659) - Dutch navigator, explorer and merchant. Received worldwide recognition for the sea voyages he led in the years. He was the first famous European explorer to reach the shores of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji. Tasman erased from the map large "blank spots" in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the northwest coast of Australia. West Side After this voyage, the mainland took on the contours that we see on modern maps.

The Tasman expedition was one of the most important overseas voyages of the 17th century. Tasman discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), New Zealand and the islands of Tonga and Fiji. He "separated" the new Dutch land from the southern mainland, opened a new sea route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific in the band of stable westerly winds of the forties latitudes, he rightly assumed that the ocean washing Australia from the south captures a vast expanse in the forties and fiftieth latitudes. Contemporaries did not use these important discoveries Tasman, but they were duly appreciated by James Cook - he owes much to Tasman for the success of his first two voyages.

James Cook British navigator, the largest explorer of Oceania, the first explorer of the Antarctic seas. In the years committed 2 circumnavigation,

Received an appointment in Greenwich Observatory, but agreed to take part in the third expedition. The purpose of this new voyage was to find a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from the Pacific Ocean. On the way across the Pacific Ocean, Cook made his main discovery - Hawaiian Islands where he later found his death.

All Cook's voyages were intended not only to subjugate the new lands to the British crown, but their full scientific description: astronomical and hydrographic measurements, ethnographic, botanical and zoological studies. Europeans first learned the words "kangaroo" and "taboo" from Cook's magazines. The Cook Islands archipelago, a number of bays and inlets, as well as the strait between the two largest islands New Zealand. Cook was the first to study the nature of New Zealand. Cook explored and mapped the east coast of Australia. The Cook Islands archipelago, a number of bays and inlets, as well as the strait between the two largest islands of New Zealand, bears the name Cook.

Luis Vaes de Thoreis In honor of this Spanish navigator some geographic features: Toreis Strait (the strait between Australia and New Guinea, which was named after the navigator in 1769), Toreis Strait Islands (a group of islands in this strait), Toreis Islands (a group of islands in the northern part of the New Hebrides archipelago). Member of the expedition Discovered the southern coast of Nov. Guinea, Coral Sea, Gulf of Papua.

Strzelecki Pavel Edmund Polish naturalist, geologist and geographer. Traveled in North and South America and the islands of Oceania. In years he was the first to explore New South Wales, the Australian Alps. He discovered gold deposits and the highest point in Australia - Mount Kosciuszko. Explored Tasmania in years

Edward John Eyre English explorer English explorer of Australia. He began his travels deep into the continent in 1873. Discovered the Flinders Range, Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre; in years he tried to scout the road from Adelaide to Perth (on west coast continent)

Charles Napier Sturt - English traveler and colonial figure, explorer of Australia. In 1829 Sturt made a new journey. He went down the Murrumbidgee River, after some time met with the expedition of Hume and Howell, and later they joined their efforts. They discovered the Murray River and, descending down its course, discovered the mouth of the Darling River and a survey of the Murray River Basin.

Hume and Hovell The first Europeans to come to Albury were Hamilton Hume and William Hovell. During the expedition, they sailed here on the Murray River on November 16, 1824, marking this place on their maps as "Crossing Point". And the largest tributaries of the Murray Darling and Murrumbidgee originate much to the north, in the most beautiful part of the Great Dividing Range, called the Blue Mountains.

Warburton Peter is an English traveler in Australia. the first to cross the Great Sandy Desert, a vast expanse of predominantly ridge sand in the northwestern part of the mainland, one of its hottest places. In the middle of the desert, Warburton discovered the Joan Springs group of springs. Then he went to the upper reaches of the river. De Grey, which flows into the Indian Ocean. After that, the traveler passed through the upper reaches of a series of creeks and went to Nicol Bay (20 ° 30 "S). Warburton was the first to cross Western Australia from east to west, thereby contributing to the elimination of the "white spot" in the area of ​​the Great Sandy Desert.

Discovery history. Man appeared in Australia 40 thousand years ago. They were newcomers from South and Southeast Asia, the forerunners of modern aborigines. Having populated the eastern part of Australia, people also penetrated into Tasmania. The fact that the Tasmanians are descendants of ancient Australians is confirmed by recent archaeological finds on Hunter Island in Bass Strait.

Assumptions about the existence of the mysterious Terra incognita Australis - the "Unknown Southern Land" south of the equator were expressed by ancient geographers. A vast area of ​​land in the southern hemisphere was depicted on maps in the 15th century, although its outlines in no way resembled Australia. Some information concerning the northern coasts of Australia was available from the Portuguese as far back as the 16th century; they came from the inhabitants of the Malay Islands, who visited the coastal waters of the mainland to catch trepangs. However, until the 17th century, none of the Europeans managed to see Australia with their own eyes.

The discovery of Australia has long been associated with the name of the English navigator James Cook. In fact, the first Europeans to visit the coast of this continent and meet here with scattered tribes of aborigines were the Dutch: Willem Janszon in 1605 and Abel Tasman in 1642. Janszon crossed the Torres Strait and sailed along the coast of the Cape York Peninsula, while Tasman discovered the southwestern part of Tasmania, which he considered part of the mainland. And the Spaniard Torres in 1606 sailed through the strait that separates the island of New Guinea from the mainland.

However, the Spaniards and the Dutch kept their discoveries secret. James Cook sailed to the east coast of Australia only one hundred and fifty years later, in 1770, and immediately declared it an English possession. A royal “penal colony” was created here for criminals, and later for exiled members of the Chartist movement in England. Representatives of the British authorities, who arrived in 1788 with the "first fleet" to the shores of Australia, founded the city of Sydney, which was subsequently proclaimed the administrative center of the British colony of New South Wales, created in 1824. With the arrival of the "second fleet" the first free settlers appear. Development begins, or rather, the capture of the mainland, accompanied by the most severe extermination of the indigenous population. Aborigines were hunted, and bonuses were given for the dead. Often, the colonists staged real raids on the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, killing them without distinction of sex and age, scattering poisoned food, after which people died in terrible agony. Not surprisingly, a hundred years later, most of the indigenous population was exterminated. The remaining natives were driven from the land of their ancestors and pushed into the interior desert regions. In 1827, England announces the establishment of its sovereignty over the entire continent.

The end of the 18th and the entire 19th century for Australia is the time of geographical discoveries. In 1797, the exploration of the shores of the continent began by the talented English hydrographer M. Flinders, whose work Australian geographers rate as highly as Cook's discoveries. He confirmed the existence of the Bass Strait, explored the coasts of Tasmania and South Australia, all the eastern and north coast mainland, mapped the Great Barrier Reef. Flinders, on the other hand, proposed giving the continent the name "Australia", replacing it with the previously accepted designation on the maps "New Holland", which was finally supplanted since 1824.

By the 19th century, the contours of the mainland were mostly mapped, but the interior remained a “blank spot”. The first attempt to penetrate deep into Australia was made in 1813 by an expedition of English colonists who discovered a passage through the Blue Mountains and discovered magnificent pasture lands west of the Great Dividing Range. A “land fever” began: a stream of free settlers poured into Australia, capturing huge plots of land, where they organized thousands of sheep farms. This land grab was called “squatting”.

The parties of prospectors moved further and further west, south and north, crossed the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers. In 1840, P. Strzelecki discovered the highest peak of the mainland in the Australian Alps, which he named Mount Kosciuszko in honor of the national hero of Poland.

More than a dozen large expeditions were equipped to explore the Australian Interior, attempts were made to cross the continent. Significant discoveries in the depths of the mainland belong to C. Sturt, who first discovered the Darling River and the Simpson Desert. Significant discoveries in the southeast were made by D. Mitchell, in the west by D. Gray; V. Leichgard traveled from the Darling Range to the northern coast, but three years later, while trying to cross the continent from east to west, his expedition went missing in the endless deserts of Central Australia.

For the first time, R. Burke managed to cross the continent from south to north, who led a well-equipped expedition in 1860-1861. Burke went from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but on the way back he died along with his companion W. Wils. D. Stuart managed to cross the continent twice, passing through the most sultry places of the central deserts.

By the end of the 19th century, exploration of inland Australia was completed.

At the very beginning of the 19th century, a hard labor colony was founded in Tasmania, free settlers appeared on the island later, only in the 20s of the 19th century, and at the same time extermination campaigns against the Tasmanian aborigines began. In just a decade, most of the Tasmanians were exterminated. In 1876, the last Tasmanian woman died.

The period of discovery in Tasmania lasted until 1843. By this time, not only the coasts, but also the central regions had been surveyed, work began on a continuous large-scale survey of the territory, and in the 70s large deposits of tin, gold and rare metals were discovered on the island.

The first settlers who arrived in Australia did not find anything similar to the landscapes of England. They did not perceive either the beauty of malga (acacia bushes) or the magnificence of eucalyptus forests. The colonists did everything to make the landscapes in which they got as close as possible to the parks and pastures of England.

Until the middle of the 19th century, the development of Australian territories was slow. The exiles who arrived with the first ships brought with them seeds and seedlings of plants, which they began to grow on the poor sandy soils around the first settlement on the site of modern Sydney. Agriculture was slash-and-burn, organic fertilizers were not used, as there were no livestock. During the year, two crops were harvested - wheat and corn, when the crops fell, the site was abandoned.

Gradually, farmers began to move from the areas of initial development on the southeast coast, following the pastoralists, inland, north, to the tropical coast, changing old and breeding new crops. From 1850 to 1914, Australian farmers mastered the best lands on the continent. The most fertile soils were almost completely occupied by wheat, and sugar cane was grown further north, on the alluvial plains near the Tropic of Capricorn.

At the same time, cattle breeding began to move into the interior of Australia, at first to the relatively watered areas of the light forests of the southeast, and then to the arid regions of Central Australia.

An important milestone in the development of the country was the middle of the last century, when gold was found in several places at once - first in the states of Victoria and New Wales, and then in Western Australia. At this time, a stream of immigrants, mainly English and Irish, rushes to Australian soil.

The "Gold Rush", as well as the spread of extensive sheep breeding over large areas of land, led to the rapid development of the economy, population growth and the administrative formation of the colonies. In the 70s, there were already six separate colonies in Australia: New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, which fought for self-government. In the period from 1873 to 1883, negotiations were held between the colonies on the creation of a federation, which ended by 1889 with the development of a draft constitution.

Abel Tasman- Dutch navigator, explorer and merchant. He received worldwide recognition for the sea campaigns he led in 1642-1644. He was the first known European explorer to reach the shores of New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji. The data collected during his expeditions helped to prove the fact that Australia is a separate continent.

Abel Janszoon Tasman was born in 1603 in the village of Lütjegast near Groningen (now the municipality of Grotegast in the province of Groningen) in the Netherlands. The exact date of his birth is unknown. The first documentary mention of him refers to 1631, when he, already widowed by that time, remarried. As follows from the surviving church record, his wife was illiterate and came from a poor family, which indirectly confirmed the validity of the assumptions of the researchers of his biography about his low social status during that period.

Presumably at the same time, Abel Tasman entered the service of the Dutch East India Company as a simple sailor, but already in the records of 1634 he appears as the skipper (captain) of one of the company's ships. The main occupation of the company's sailors at that time was the service of transportation of spices and spices, which were an expensive and valuable commodity for the European market.

In 1638, Tasman, commanding a ship, sailed to India.

In 1639, Tasman led one of two ships (together with M. Quast) equipped by the East India Company to explore the navigation areas in the region of Japan and trade opportunities with local population. In general, this expedition was not successful and after 6 months spent at sea, the Tasman ship, having lost almost 40 out of 90 crew members, returned to the Dutch fort Zeelandia on the island of Formosa (Taiwan). During this voyage, Bonin Island was discovered by him.

In 1640, Tasman again led one of the 11 Dutch ships headed for the shores of Japan. This time he spent about three months in the Japanese port of Hirado.

In 1642, Tasman was appointed commander of a detachment of two ships of the East India Company sent to explore the southern and eastern waters of the Pacific Ocean. According to the hypotheses of geographers and navigators of that era, it was these waters that should have washed the shores of the mythical Unknown Southern Land, about the possible wealth of which several generations told. During this voyage, on November 24, 1642, Tasman discovered a large island (Tasmania) off the coast of Australia and named it Van Diemen's land in honor of the governor of the Netherlands East Indies. After following several tens of miles along the coast of the island, Tasman turned east and on December 13 he saw the outlines of another unfamiliar land. It was the South Island of New Zealand. During the stop at this island, Europeans first met with the Maori, the original inhabitants of New Zealand. The meeting ended tragically: the Maori attacked the landing Dutch, killed several sailors and disappeared. Frustrated by this incident, Tasman named this place Killer Bay (now Golden Bay).

Continuing along the west coast of the North Tasman Island, he reached its tip and turned to the northeast. On January 21, 1643, the expedition reached the Tonga archipelago, discovering here several previously unknown islands. Having replenished supplies of water and food on Tonga, on February 6, Tasman's ships approached the islands of the Fiji archipelago. Further, leaving the Fiji Islands to the south, Tasman passed along the northern coast of New Guinea and on June 15, after an almost ten-month journey, arrived in Batavia.

In 1643, Tasman led a detachment of three East India Company ships along the western coast of New Guinea and the northern coast of Australia. As a result, a significant part of the coast of northern Australia was mapped for the first time.

From the point of view of the leadership of the East India Company, the sailing of detachments of ships under the command of Tasman in 1642-1644 ended in complete failure - new areas of trade were never discovered and new sea passages were not found for navigation. Until almost 100 years later, the British navigator James Cook traveled, Europeans never began to explore New Zealand, and visits to Australia were isolated and most often caused by shipwrecks. After the expedition returned to Batavia, Tasman was promoted to the rank of commander and raised his salary, and he himself was appointed a member of the Legal Council of Batavia. In 1647 he was sent as a representative to the king of Siam, and in 1648 he led a detachment of 8 ships that opposed the ships of the Spanish fleet.

Around 1651, Abel Tasman retired and moved on to trade in Batavia.

Relief. Australia is the flattest continent. Most of it is a plain, the edges of which are raised, especially in the east. Mountains occupy only 5% of the mainland. The average height of the mainland is 340-350 m above sea level. In the structure of its surface, three areas are clearly expressed: the Zahidno-Australian Plateau 400-500 m high, the Central Lowland, where the most low point mainland (-12 m below sea level), and the medium-altitude Great Dividing Range in the east with the highest point of the mainland (Mount Kosciuszko, 2228 m).

The geological structure of Australia in comparison with other continents is the simplest. The mainland consists of ancient Precambrian and young

Epihercynian platforms occupying the western and central territory, and a much smaller folded belt of the Liznoproterozoic and Paleozoic age in the east.

The Australian platform is one of the largest on Earth. A distinctive feature of its structure is the alternation of protrusions of the ancient foundation and depressions. The outcrops of metamorphosed and volcanic rocks of the folded basement form three shields - Zakhidno-Australian, Pivnichno-Australian and Shvdenno-Australian. Within the framework of the first of them, the oldest rocks were found, which were formed more than 3 billion years ago.

"The eastern part of the mainland from the Cape York Peninsula in the north to the island of Tasmania in the south" has the Shidno-Australian folded region.

Geological structures determined the differences in the forms of the surface of the western and eastern parts of the mainland.

The Central Lowland is located in the zone of the meridional trough of the Australian Platform. Here, the relief is dominated by lowlands, confined to the areas of the greatest subsidence of the platform foundation - the basin of Lake Eyre, the Murray basin and the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Mountain types of relief in Australia are almost not common. In the southeast, to the Zahidno-Australian Plateau, low (700 - 900 m) blocky mountains Flinders and Mount Lofty adjoin. Flat-topped uplifts are broken by a graben, which go under water and form Spencer and St. Vincent bays. There are mountains in the center of Australia - McDonnelly and Musgrave,

The mountain belt of Eastern Australia is formed by the Great Dividing Range and the mountains of Tasmania. These low folded-blocky mountain structures were formed as a result of Neogene tectonic movements. The eastern slopes of the mountains are steep, the western slopes are gentle. A feature of the Great Dividing Range is the displacement of the main watershed from the higher eastern

ranges to flat-topped low-mountain plateaus in the west.

Australia is rich in minerals. The crystalline rocks of the platform foundation contain iron, copper, lead-zinc, uranium ores, and gold. Minerals of sedimentary origin include deposits of phosphorites, rock salt, hard and brown coal, oil, natural gas. Many deposits lie at shallow depths, so they are mined by open-cast mining. In terms of reserves of iron ore, non-ferrous metal ores (bauxite, lead, zinc, nickel) and uranium, Australia occupies one of the first places in the world.

Climate. Australia is the driest continent on Earth, three-quarters of its surface has insufficient moisture. Climatic conditions on the continent are determined by its position near the equator, on both sides of the tropic. It was the hot tropical sun that caused the formation of extended deserts on the continent.

Compared to South Africa and South America, South of the Equator, Australia is more "stretched" from west to east. With a weak dissection of the coastline, this causes constantly high temperatures in the interior and gives the right to consider it the hottest part of the land of the southern hemisphere.

The Australian mainland is located in three climatic zones- from subequatorial in the north, in the main part of the tropical, in the subtropical in the south, and climatologists refer the island of Tasmania to the temperate zone.

From December to February (in the summer of the southern hemisphere), the mainland warms up strongly, especially its central parts; This is the hot season of the year. In the area of ​​Alice Springs (the center of Australia) and in the adjacent deserts, the average air temperatures during the day are about 35-36 degrees, and on some days even above +40. In winter, daytime temperatures here are almost two times lower - about +20 degrees, in the Great Victoria Desert - up to +10 degrees, in some years night frosts are not ruled out.

In inland areas, the influx of moist air from the north leads to occasional rains in summer, which, on the whole, are of little effect. South of 19-20o S sh. rainfall is no more than 300 mm, and semi-deserts and deserts dominate.

On the West Coast - in Perth the climate is somewhat milder due to the influence of the ocean - in the summer it is usually 30-degree heat, in winter the air cools down to +18 ... + 20 degrees during the day and + 6 ... + 8 at night.

In the most inhabited region of Australia - the southeast coast, the Mediterranean type of climate reigns - with hot, dry summers and rainy mild winters. So, in Melbourne in summer, on typical January days, the thermometer usually stays around +25..+27 degrees, and in winter it drops to +10…+12, at night to +5.

In the coolest part of the country - on the island of Tasmania, a typical British climate reigns - in summer the daytime temperature is +20 ... +22, in winter it is ten degrees cooler. In winter, night frosts occur, but there is no stable snow cover here - in the entire region, snow steadily falls only on the tops of the mountains.