Australia's unique flora and fauna

Australia remains one of the most biodiverse continents in the world, due to it's isolation and relatively stable geology over a long time many unique and endemic plants and animals are found in Australia. There are many links to other areas (Sth America, India and parts of SE Asia and Melanesia) that once, together with the present continent of Australia, were joined as a single huge continent known as Gondwana.
As an example the Sydney metropolitan area has some 2000 species of plants reported, the entire flora of Great Britain comes to some 1600 species, overall there are more than 20,000 plant species reported in the whole of Australia, much of that poorly known and documented, let alone analysed.
Due also to the lack of agriculture or more accurately, specific plant breeding with native species until only the last 60 years or so, the Australian flora generally exhibits a high degree of variation and genetic biodiversity. This is changing as various cultivars become available as horticultural specimens and more recently in research for native 'bushfoods' and medicines, which have for the most part been ignored or dismissed previously.

See these sites for more Australian flora and Fauna info..

The first people? Aboriginal Australia

At present there is some dispute about how long Aboriginal people had been in Australia, certainly an extremely long time, with at least 40,000 years acknowledged by many. Though recent archeological findings suggest that humans may have been on the Australian continent up to 170,000 years ago, prior to the time that it is assumed that 'modern man' walked out of Africa.
Certainly by the time Europeans arrived on the scene, Aborigenes had been walking this continent for more generations than the Europeans could remeber. Suffice to say that the misunderstanding and outright hostility resulted in what can only be termed the near genocide of the Australian Aboriginal race, for the most part without anyone knowing or doing anything to halt it.

Check out these links to find out more, see what Aboriginal people are doing and saying..

Society for growing Australian plants

Aust National Botanic Gardens - Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research homepage

Indigenous Flora and Fauna Assoc

Aborigines of Australia

Aboriginal Studies

Yothu Yindi (Yolngu Music and Art)