Connecting you with Australian culture online
Australian weather and the seasons European discovery and the colonisation of Australia Great Barrier Reef The Australian Gold Rush Australian Indigenous cultural heritage Melbourne Cup Convicts and the British colonies in Australia Australian food and drink Sydney Opera House The Great Depression
Australian animation is internationally recognised, Leisure (1976), Harvie Krumpet (2003) and Happy Feet (2006) have all won Oscars. Leisure employs cell style animation, Harvie Krumpet is made using the method of stop-motion claymation and Happy Feet fe...
However, the first zoo in Australia, Melbourne Zoo, wasn't established until 1862. Taronga Zoo and Western Plains Zoo are jointly administered New South Wales public zoos. The zoo features both Australian native species and exotic species of mammals, bi...
But perhaps our most mysterious animal is the thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, which is considered to have become extinct in 1936. The now-extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Although commonly called the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, the thylacine has more in co...
Ben Snow, Visual Effects Supervisor for Van Helsing (2004) and Pearl Harbour (2001). Hidden behind the scenes in film, television, new media and game production, a number of Australian individuals and companies have been quietly contributing their creati...
Almost all of Australia's native mammals are marsupials. There are only two types of monotreme in the world - the platypus and the echidna - and both of them are found in Australia. Platypuses are found all along the eastern coast of Australia, from Tas...
Before white settlement, Aboriginal people survived off the native plants and animals of the Australian environment for thousands of years. Bush foods such as berries, roots and nectars were a vital part of the aboriginal diet in many areas. In the late...
Aboriginal dancers telling Dreamtime stories at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony. The Dreaming for Australian Indigenous people (sometimes referred to as the Dreamtime or Dreamtimes) is when the Ancestral Beings moved across the land and created life...
Digital games have come a long way since the days of Pong - and Australian games companies are helping them go even further. This has led to the Australian games industry earning a reputation for quality in a vast worldwide market hungry for new content....
This includes Pleistocene era Aboriginal body fossils, many of which were removed and sent overseas. The Riversleigh fossil site, near Mount Isa Queensland, is recognised as one of the most important fossil sites in the world. The Riversleigh and Narrac...
With mounting evidence and stories circulating about their seemingly miraculous ability to find people, Aboriginal trackers' abilities became legendary in the minds of white Australians. Paul Raffaele, Aboriginal tracker Teddy Egan and son. The Australi...
Eventually, streams catch more water or join other streams to form a river. The Murray River and its main tributary, the Darling River, are the two main rivers in the Murray-Darling River Basin. The Snowy River is probably Australia's most famous river,...
It also contains links to sites that may use images of Aboriginal and Islander people now deceased. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are complex and diverse. In Australia, Indigenous communities keep their cultural heritage alive by passin...
Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. Memorabilia is displayed in museums like the Chinese Museum, Melbourne, and the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo. Bendigo Chinese Association Golden Dragon Museum....
Hoopdive, The Flying Fruit Fly Circus. Troupes like the Flying Fruit Fly Circus and Circus Oz have spearheaded a new style of circus performance that features highly physical activities and no animal tricks. Judith Lanigan trained with a small modern cir...
Image courtesy of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The Great Barrier Reef, off the east coast of Australia, is one of the wonders of the natural world - it is the world's largest coral reef ecosystem. In 2003, the previous Australian Governm...
Traditional Indigenous architecture was domestic - across a range of well crafted and technologically designed shelters and residential camps. Courtesy of Queensland Museum and Aboriginal Environments Research Centre. Annual base camp structures, whether...
Bark Painting, Evans Collection, Northern Territory Library. Image courtesy of the Northern Territory Library and the National Library of Australia. Australian Indigenous art is the oldest ongoing tradition of art in the world. ...
Blue Lake, Kosciuszko National Park. Australia has over 500 national parks. Most of our national parks are managed by the States and Territories of Australia; however the Commonwealth of Australia manages six national parks and a further 13 marine parks...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science was established in 1927 and the Academy Awards or Oscars ceremonies commenced in 1929. Image courtesy of Latent Image Productions Pty Ltd and National Film & Sound Archive. Their Oscar Statuette is on displa...
Modern Australian poetry seeks to tell Australian stories and truths with a poetic significance so that 'they sear into the soul and can never be untold' (Dorothy Porter). The Jindyworobaks encouraged Australian writers to express themselves in language ...
If you can see this message, you are probably not seeing this site in the way it was designed. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS2) to control the way in which elements are displayed on the page.
You will still be able to access everything in this site, but we do recommend you upgrade your browser to a more recent, standards compliant, browser.