LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Australia: South Australia
built 276 days ago
South Australia: South Australia is the country’s driest state, which means that outdoor activities require careful planning. Not only is drinking water hard to come by, but ... dense forests and woodlands that might provide shade and shelter from winds are scarce. In summer, temperatures soar, particularly in the north of the state, so travelers should save ore arduous undertakings for the winter months. South Australia’s major landforms include the series of rugged mountain ranges that runs north from Adelaide culminating in the Flinders and Gammon ranges; these provide plenty of challenges for walkers, cyclists and climbers. In the south-east, the vast lagoons of the Coorong and the 404 miles of the Murray River that wend from the border with New South Wales and Victoria to the sea are favoured by canoeists and kayakers. Caving is also popular in South Australia, perhaps because the state has the best cave diving and some of the best dry caving in the country.
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The name "Australia" is derived from the Latin Australis, meaning "Southern". Legends of an "unknown land of the south" (terra australis incognita) date back to Roman times and were commonplace in medieval geography, but were not based on any actual knowledge of the continent. The first use of the word "Australia" in English was in 1625—the words "A note of Australia del Espiritu Santo, written by Master Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus.[4] The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used by Dutch officials in Batavia to refer to the newly discovered land to the south in 1638. "Australia" was used in a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Découverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1692 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny under the pen name Jacques Sadeur.[5] Alexander Dalrymple then used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1771), to refer to the entire South Pacific region. In 1793, George Shaw and Sir James Smith published Zoology and Botany of New Holland, in which they wrote of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland."
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Australia has a long tradition of supplying cannon fodder for its imperial overlords - (Britain 1788-1958, and America 1958-Armageddon) - any time they decide to embark on a new adventure. This first began in the Boer War, which wound up with Edward Woodward being tied to a chair and shot. Australians recently commemorated this event by briefly renaming a pub on Chapel St, South Yarra, "Rorke's Drift".
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Australia ... has several minor territories; the federal government administers a separate area within New South Wales, the Jervis Bay Territory, as a naval base and sea port for the national capital. In addition Australia has the following, inhabited, external territories: Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and several largely uninhabited external territories: Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and the Australian Antarctic Territory.
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In Australia, Apache is planning to drill 52 wells, including 32 exploration wells, in 2008. The schedule includes four additional exploration wells on the Julimar-Brunello trend and Apache's first exploration program in the Gippsland Basin off the coast of the southeastern state of Victoria -- Australia's most prolific oil province with a variety of play types. The first of Apache's eight wells, the Wasabi-1, is scheduled to spud around Feb. 1.
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The continent of Australia was apparently first settled more than 40,000 years ago with successive waves of immigration of Aboriginal peoples from south and south-east Asia. With rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, Australia became largely isolated from the rest of the world and the Aboriginal tribes developed a variety of cultures, based on a close (spiritual) relationship with the land and nature, and extended kinship. Australian aborigines maintained a hunter/gatherer culture for thousands of years in association with a complex artistic and cultural life - including a very rich 'story-telling' tradition. While the 'modern impression' of Australian Aborigines is largely built around an image of the 'desert people' who have adapted to some of the harshest conditions on the planet (equivalent to the bushmen of the Kalahari), Australia provided a 'comfortable living' for the bulk of aborigines amongst the bountiful flora and fauna on the Australian coast - until the arrival of Europeans.
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South Australia