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Australia Travel: Countries
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One of the most popular ways to come to Australia is under a Working Holiday Visa. This option is only available for people aged between 18 and 30, who have no dependent children, and who are citizens of either the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland, South Korea, Malta, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Hong Kong SAR, Finland or Cyprus. With a Working Holiday Visa, you can travel around Australia for up to 12 months and work for employers for up to 3 months. If you are not eligible for the Working Holiday Visa, you are generally still able to obtain a Tourist Visa for 3 months. For citizens of Chile, Iran and Thailand, there is another visa called a Work and Holiday Visa. Only about 100 of these are released per country each year, so these aren't easy to obtain.[2]
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Australia has a generally well-maintained system of roads and highways. In Australia, as in many large countries, "the car is king". The vast majority of Australian adults own cars and would not seriously contemplate being without one. Most of the state capitals are linked to each other by good quality highways. Some parts are dual carriageway but many sections are one lane each way. Major regional areas have sealed (paved) dual-lane roads, but isolated areas may have poorly maintained dirt roads or even tracks. Note that Australia's low population density makes for long driving times, often with 'nothing much' in between--here are some indicative travel times:
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As Australia covers 30 degrees of latitude, there is a wide variation in its climate. Looking to the north, about 40% of the continent is in the tropics. In the southeast region of the Australian Alps, there is snow for about 6 months of the year. Primarily, Australia is a sunshine country - even in the cooler southern regions. No capital gets less than 5.5 hours of sunshine per day. Perth is the sunniest state capital, with nearly 8 hours of sunshine a day.
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While Australia began its modern history as a British penal colony, the vast majority of people who came to Australia after 1788 were free settlers, mainly from Britain and Ireland, but ... from other European countries. Convict settlements were along the east coast, Adelaide and Perth being settled by free settlers. Many Asian and Eastern European people also came to Australia in the 1850s, during the Gold Rush that started Australia's first resource boom. Although such diverse immigration diminished greatly during the xenophobic years of the White Australia policy, Australia welcomed a successive series of immigration from Europe, the Mediterranean and later Asia to formulate a highly diverse and multicultural society by the late 20th century.
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Australia's size warrants air travel between major cities. For those with more time on their hands, driving can be an excellent way to see a lot of the country. Australia has some excellent highways and roads which afford a fantastic road trip.
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Australia is a multi-cultural country, so it's not unusual to walk down a city street and hear people speaking Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Vietnamese or Arabic as their first language. Aboriginal languages are ... spoken. English-speaking Australians have a passion for abbreviations and are liable to use a hotchpotch of local slang that can take the first-time visitor a while to untangle.
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