Outback

As Australian Outback regions are referred to, which are far away from civilization. It covers almost three-quarters of Australia's surface and extends mainly over the Northern Territory and Western Australia and parts of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

The Outback includes a wide variety of landforms and climates. Vast areas of extremely dry outback of Western Australia, where sometimes for years there is no rain in the summer, temperatures above 50 ° C, are completely inaccessible. The outback Queensland, however, consists partly of pristine tropical rainforest. Heavily developed are the rainforests of the Top End, Kakadu National Park and the deserts of the Red Centre to the Uluru- Kata Tjuta National Park, in the center of the famous monolith Uluru, also called Ayers Rock itself, is located; known are also the Karlu Karlu ( Devil 's Marbles ).

History

It is estimated that the interior of Australia has been inhabited by Aborigines for about 40,000 to 50,000 years, which have not migrated across a land bridge from Southeast Asia / Indonesia. The history of scientific exploration begins with the first expeditions of European explorers through the interior of the continent:

• Edward John Eyre, an English sheep farmer, crossed 1840/1841 the Nullarbor Plain from Adelaide to Western Australia. According to him, the Great Salt Lake Lake Eyre is named.
• John McDouall Stuart took 1844/1845 first forays into Central Australia in search of water. In 1862 he crossed the continent from south to north successfully. The Stuart Highway bears his name.
• Ludwig Leichhardt, a German explorer who traveled 1844/1845 4800 km overland from the east to the north coast. In 1848 he embarked on an east-west crossing of the continent, from which he never returned.
• The expedition of Burke and Wills in the years 1860 and 1861 ended in disaster.
• Ernest Giles, who discovered the Kata Tjuta, crossed in 1873 as the first European to the deserts of Western Australia; his companion Alfred Gibson, after the Gibson Desert is named, it came around. In the same year William Gosse was the first European at Uluru.

Infrastructural characteristics

• A few paved main routes ( Highways ) by pulling the Outback; off these routes are sand tracks passable only with four-wheel drive in the desert and rainforest.
• Individual cattle farms and supply stations with few houses. Frequently there are gas station, grocery store, repair shop, bank, post office, motel and pub in a single house, the Roadhouse, housed.
• The children receive distance education via radio ( School of the Air ), and the Internet, in case of illness of the Royal Flying Doctor Service ( RFDS ) is called.
• Camels were introduced in 1870 as desert animals from the Middle East in the Fifth Continent. Today they are held on farms and serve addition to the independent supply as a tourist attraction.
• Of the approximately 300,000 Aboriginal people ( about 1.5 percent of the total Australian population ) live about 20 percent in the outback, most of them in reserves (in the minority still traditionally nomadic or semi-nomadic ).
• Communicative events such as the Birdsville Races have local cult status.
• Road Trains, usually mounted with a cow catcher on the front ( in Australia often called " Roo Bar" - kangaroo catcher called ), set the overland transport safely.

Understanding of the term

In tourism parlance outside Australia, the understanding of the Red Centre has established itself as a pars pro toto for the outback, because this has become accessible not only for frequent travelers, but also for package tourists by good infrastructural development. In Australia, the term " outback " was used in print first in 1869 and at the time meant "west of Wagga Wagga " in the state of New South Wales.

For Australian Outback is a very elastic term, its interpretation varies greatly depending on where you live. To include for example the inhabitants of the metropolis of Sydney's already the Blue Mountains ( about 60 kilometers west of Sydney ), Wollongong ( about 100 kilometers south of Sydney ), and Newcastle ( about 100 kilometers north of Sydney ) to the Outback ( in the bush ). Alice Springs is located tourist outback flavor, but does not see himself among the native population as the Outback.

From the use of the term here can be the Outback with the Argentine pampas, the South African High Veld or the New Zealand High Country compare. The real outback are the autonomous communities and self- farms away from the urban centers. Very often the word " Outback " is also used in broadcasting to denote the outskirts of major cities in the traffic.