Queensland

Queensland, also known as the Sunshine State, originally called Cooksland (Cook’s land) and then won the very honorable name – it was chosen because of the great popularity of Queen Victoria– in 1859 when gained independence from New-South-Wales.Queensland is currently one of the centers of Australian tourism, as seaside attractions can be found here, such as the Great Barrier Reef (Great Barrier Reef), or the world famous Gold Coast beaches.

Queensland in numbers

Biggest cities: Brisbane, Logan City, Ipswich and the Gold Coast area
Area: 1,852,642 km2
Population and population density: 4,516,361person - 2.61person / km2

Weather and Geography

Thanks to its huge size the weather in Queensland varies significantly. In the interior - especially in the West - areas there is only little rain and the summer is sultry, while in the north the monsoon and along the coast temperately warm weather is typical.Queensland is located in the north-east of the Australian continent and its neighbors are the Northern Territory, New South Wales and South Australia. By its area it is the second largest after Western Australia, by its population it is the third one behind New South Wales and Victoria.The territory's capital is Brisbane, where originally the Moreton Bay penal settlement was. Those dangerous recidivist criminals were locked here whom with the authorities could not succeed in New South Wales.

Transportation

The traffic is very well organized in Queensland due to its huge size. Transport is basically divided into three main areas: road, rail, and air; the most commonly used of these is of course the road. Queensland provides a number of high-grade highways, which concentrated to the southern region, the most important of them is the M1.
Rail transport is managed by the company Translink. However, Translink leads not only the Queensland rail, but the buses and ferry services as well. Thanks to that fact the three modes of transports are well organized and coordinated, which is an explicit benefit, for example, when we consider a multi-hour train ride and the connection to the ferry service.
Aviation is also remarkable in the area, as it speaks for itself that Queensland has four international and seven domestic airports. The most significant of these is the Brisbane Airport and Gold Coast Airport that can be seen in the picture below.

Sport

In the life of Queenslanders’ the sporting events are of great importance. They are organizing several domestic and international sporting events every year, just to name a few: the State of Origin - this is the most important rugby event in Australia - as well as the Gold Coast Indy 300 and the Queensland 400 car racing.
Of course, rugby is the trendiest sport throughout the continent, but it is especially important in Queensland, since the domestic team, the Queensland Maroons won against his greatest rival, the New South Wales Blue the sixth time in a row.

Curiosities and Attractions

Queensland’s two main attractions are the Gold Coast and the Great Barrier Reef.
The Gold Coast is roughly 100 km far from the capital city, Brisbane. On one side there is the golden sand beach on the other side the Great Dividing Range. But the Gold Coast is much more than a huge beach studded by hotels and aqua parks. More than half a million Australians live here and it is currently one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
It is difficult to write about the Great Barrier Reef without superlatives. Therefore, we select only one that perhaps describes the best what we mean. It is a well known fact about the Great Barrier Reef that it is the world's largest coral reef. However, few people know that this is the only creature on Earth that is visible to the naked eye from space.
It's true this is huge, contiguous organism 2,600 km long and is running parallel the coast of Queensland.
This is one of the world’s seven natural wonders and was listed as World Heritage by the UNESCO in 1981.

History

Not counting the Australian Aborigines - who arrived in this area about 50,000 years ago - Queensland history began when it became an independent crown colony in 1859; it seceded from New South Wales. This special day - June 6-over - the so-called Day Queensland is celebrated each year.
However, the early history of Queensland is quite tragic. In fact, when James Cook discovered in 1770, this area was established for the first time in a kind of front line among the Australian aborigines and the settlers. For obvious reasons - organization, technological superiority - the colonists and the British redcoats decimated the indigenous population in an unprecedented manner.
After the armed conflict did not become much better, as the vast expanse of Queensland banana and sugar plantations had been set up and were tilled with kanaka workers. Kanaka originally means native Hawaiian, however, in Queensland kanaka- workers mean people from the Pacific islands closer to the mainland. Although among historians this issue, is the subject of heated debate but many people believe that the Australian application of Kanaka-workers was a form of modern slavery.