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= = =** AUSTRALIA ** =

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===Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere, comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller island in the Indian and Pacific oceans. === ===Neighbouring countries include: Indonesia, East Timor and Papua and New Guinea to the north, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the northeast and New Zealand to the southeast. === ===Modern Australia was founded with the influx of European settlers just over two hundred years ago, but the Aborigines inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years before that. === ===They numbered a few hundred thousand before the European influx. But two centuries of discrimination and expropriationfollowed, and at one point the indigenous population fell as low as 60,000. === ===Australia's politicians at first looked to Europe and the US in foreign policy, but in the past 20 years or so they have made their near neighbours a priority. === = = = = = =

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