Everyone in my family has been to Australia at one time or another in their life except for me. My parents lived there for a long time, and some of my siblings were even born there. I still have aunts, uncles, and cousins who live there as well, but I have never visited, and so it is at the top of my bucket list of places to visit. So, when I saw this documentary as one to watch for this week, I was really excited.
Australia is a very large country/continent that is only inhabited along the coasts and not much in the middle. The climate is so very diverse in different parts of the country. Temperatures in the outback can reach very high, and that is probably why the outback part of the country is not populated as much as the rest. Australia’s best-known climate is the outback, which is a semi-arid to arid climate in the interior. (pg 460 of our textbook) I thought that it was pretty cool to learn that the climate itself is called Outback. I thought that it was just the name for the inland part of the country.
The indigenous population of Australia is called the Aboriginal people. When settlers first came to Australia, they didn’t realize that the country was already inhabited by Aborigines who lived inland, deep in the desert. New settlers didn’t take the indigenous people into consideration when they started testing nuclear bombs in the desert without regard to those who were living there. The Aborigines were forced to move to keep safe from the blasts. Today, the Aborigines have areas that were created just for them where they could keep living their lives the way they were used to.
Climate change is also affecting those living in Australia today. The extra heat is affecting the animals that the Aborigines hunt, which is making it harder for them to keep up their way of life. Storms that hit Australia have also become more severe and shut down parts of the Outback for days. My family, who still lives in Australia, has noticed that they have had more frequent flooding by the coast and more wildfires than normal in the Outback.
I enjoyed watching this documentary as usual, since documentaries are my favorite type of movie. I learned some more about the Outback and how different the weather can get there.
Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zabh2
[Written for GEOG 130G class UVU Spring 2022]
aB . All Right Reserved . 2025
