What kind of landform is Australia?

Answer 1

There is a great deal of variety within Australia's climate. Most of the continent lies within the temperate zone, but northern Queensland and the Top End of the Northern Territory experience a tropical and sub-tropical climate, with monsoonal rains and cyclones during the summer. By contrast, Tasmania and parts of Victoria can experience both very cool summer temperatures, then sudden jumps to extreme heat.

It is also very dry throughout southern Australia in summer - as witnessed through the tragic bushfires that killed over 170 in Victoria (February 2009). Australia experiences droughts for long periods of time, and associated heatwaves. Yet, at the same time people were losing their lives and homes in Victoria, others along the northern coast of Queensland were losing their homes to floods, with the promise of even more rain to come. Brisbane and regions north along the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range are prone to sudden thunderstorms in summer. Inconsistency is the catchword in Australia - for example, Melbourne and southern Victoria can easily switch from hot and dry one day to cold and wet the next.

Very few places in Australia experience snow, compared to the size of the continent. In Winter, snow falls in the Alpine regions of New South Wales and Victoria, and sometimes even in the central tablelands of NSW, near the Blue Mountains and Orange. Tasmania experiences some snow, as does Canberra, less frequently.

The main landforms of Australia include:

• the Australian Alps, where Australia's ten highest mountains are all within six kilometres of each other
• numerous deserts, e.g. Simpson Desert, Great Victoria desert, Great Sandy Desert, etc
• Unusual mountain formations such as the Bungle-Bungles (Western Australia) and the Warrumbungles (NSW)
• The Grampians (mountain range in western Victoria)
• Blue Lake (volcanic crater lake in Mt Gambier, South Australia)
• Limestone cliffs of the Great Australian Bight
• Uluru/Ayers Rock, the world's second largest monolith
• Mt Augustus, the world's largest monolith
• the Devil's Marbles, large tumbled rocks near Tennant Creek in central Australia
• Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island
• the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef (actually a series of reefs) and the only living organism visible from space
• Kata-tjuta/the Olgas - bald rock domes in central Australia
• the Pinnacles - a vast desert of upright sandstone formations, weathered over time into weird shapes
• the Three Sisters, a famous landmark in the Blue Mountains
• the Twelve Apostles, off the southern Victorian coastline - a series of sandstone cliffs and rock formations that are gradually eroding away (three have collapsed in the last few years)
• Wave Rock, a 14m high granite rock cliff face near Hyden, Western Australia, weathered into a perfect wave formation
• Lake Eyre, 15m below sea level in the South Australian outback, and the other many, vast saltpans
• Nullarbor Plain, a huge, treeless plain crossing South Australia and western Australia

Answer 2

Australia has many of the landforms found in other parts of the world, such as mountains and valleys, deserts, cliffs, plains, lakes and rivers, archipelagos, waterfalls, canyons, gulfs and harbours, bays and inlets, peninsulas, plateaus, reefs and straits.

Australia has no active volcanoes, but plenty of extinct one. There are also no glaciers or fjords.

Answer 3

Australia is an island continent.