Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the entirety of the world's smallest continent (although a few older references call it the world's largest island, a matter of cultural interpretation), the major island of Tasmania and a number of other islands in the Southern, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are island nations close to Australia's north coast.

The mainland of Australia has been inhabited for more than 42,000 years by Indigenous Australians. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the north and by European explorers and merchants, such as the Netherlanders, starting in the seventeenth century, the eastern half of the mainland was claimed by the British Empire in 1770 and officially settled through penal transportation as the colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788. As the population grew and new areas were explored, another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies were successively established over the course of the 19th century.

On 1 January 1901, the six colonies became a Federation, and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed. Since federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and remains a Commonwealth Realm. The capital city is Canberra, located in the Australian Capital Territory. The current national population is approximately 20.6 million people, and is concentrated mainly in the large coastal cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

Australia is treasured by zoologists for its plethora of unique mammalian lifeforms which developed in isolation from the rest of the world. However, introduction of dogs, pigs, rabbits, and other European fauna since the late 18th century have caused a number of species to become extinct or endangered due to predation or food competition. However, the most famous Australian native form, the kangaroo, shows no sign of going away. Regarded by the local humans as both a blessing and a curse, it has the paradoxical status of being both a national symbol and a prolifically breeding pest whose population has to be forcibly culled with great frequency.

Australia in Days of Infamy
Australia had been fighting with the rest of the British Empire during World War II when the Japanese entered the war in 1941. Like all of the other European powers in the Pacific, the Australians were caught unprepared. Along with the British, the Americans and the Dutch, the Australian military was defeated in Malaya, Singapore, the East Indies, and New Guinea. After the fall of Hawaii, supplying Australia from the United States became extremely difficult, and Australia feared a possible invasion as the Japanese held complete air superiority over the northern half of the continent.

Between 1942 and 1943, Australian towns were subjected to bombing raids, many of which were shown in the Japanese-controlled cinemas and newspapers of Occupied Hawaii.

By early 1943 however, the Japanese had lost their dominance over the northern Australian skies, and the U.S. Army Air Force had begun bombing the southern coast of New Guinea from Australian bases.

Australia in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Australia had been a self-governing dominion within the British Empire, until Japan conquered it during World War II.

By 2010, Australia had been solidly incorporated into the Japanese Empire.

Australia in Joe Steele
After being defeated by the Japanese in the Philippines, US General Douglas MacArthur escaped to Australia where he was promptly arrested and executed for cowardice and incompetence.

Australia in "Les Mortes d'Arthur"
By the 22nd Century Australia along with New Zealand had joined together in a political alliance called the Anzac Federation. Although they were able to afford to send a team to Mimas, a moon of Saturn, for the sixty-sixth Winter Olympic Games, they weren't wealthy enough to have their athletes train there in the low-g environment prior to the Games.

Australia in "News From the Front"
During the early stages of World War II, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on anti-war demonstrators demanding, among other things, that the US withdraw its troops from Australia.

Before Bataan fell, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on General Douglas MacArthur's flight from the Philippines to Australia, landing in Darwin, which had been bombed and evacuated.

When New York Times revealed that the UK had broken the German codes, it also revealed the presence of British code breakers in Australia as part the British intelligence network.

After the loss of Midway, it was feared that Japanese submarines could cut the supply lines to Australia.

Australia in Noninterference
Australia had more than three thousand years of history as an English-speaking continent in the southern hemisphere of Earth, going through the stages of being a British colony, an independent state, an autonomous part of United Earth and finally - while retaining the latter role - also a sub-unit of Earth itself as an autonomous Member World of the Federacy. Australia was still in the latter status during the dramatic events of the Federacy Standard Year 2686, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Australians - being native speakers of English, which was largely identical with the Federacy official language Basic - had some advantage over non-English speakers from other parts of Earth or other worlds of the Federacy.

Australia in Southern Victory
Australia was controlled by the British Empire and was mostly isolated from the major conflicts of the 19th century. By the 20th century Australia had become a dominion and in 1914 joined the rest of the Empire in the war against the Quadruple Alliance. Australia became an important base for the British Pacific fleet after the United States Navy took the Sandwich Islands in September 1914. After the war ended, Britain's position in Australia was still strong despite its defeat elsewhere.

During the 1930s as the world marched to war, it was feared that Australia, along with New Zealand could be used as a submersible base for the British Pacific fleet to attack American convoys between the mainland and the Sandwich Islands.

In 1941, Australia became involved in the Second Great War against Germany and the United States, but only played a minor role. In 1943, the country grew fearful of invasion when Japan abandoned its own war against the US and chose to concentrate against the British Empire's holdings in Asia. Fighting a losing war in Europe, the British were quickly defeated, leaving Australia isolated and alarmed.

Australia in The Two Georges
Australia was a kingdom within the British Empire ruled by the king-emperor (or queen-empress) as a constitutional monarch.

Australia in The War That Came Early
Australia joined the British Empire in declaring war on Germany in October, 1938. However the country was only a minor player in the overall conflict.

In January 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the European and US powers in the Pacific, abruptly bringing the war closer to Australia. After the allies were defeated in the Java Sea and the Japanese conquered the island of Timor, Australia found itself under direct attack. Timor gave the Imperial Japanese Navy the bases its aircraft required to bomb the port city of Darwin, while its submarines prowled the waters around the continent's north.

Australia continued on in the war against Japan throughout 1942-44, both directly fighting and providing the U.S. with a base of operations. Mundanely, the substantial U.S. presence led to baseball becoming very popular in Australia in 1944.

Australia in Worldwar
By mid-1942, Australia was fighting Germany, Italy, and Japan as World War II raged across the globe. When the Race invaded Earth in June 1942, Australia was left isolated from the rest of the world. By 1944, the Australian military was proving to be a nuisance to the Race that resisted being subdued by conventional means. This prompted Fleetlord Atvar, who had already been considering using nuclear weapons more freely, to deploy two bombs against the continent's major population centers of Sydney and Melbourne. The tactic worked, and Australia's population was decimated and subdued in the aftermath. Although the British had been outraged by this, they were unable to retaliate, and forced to relinquish all claim to Australia at the Peace of Cairo, after which it was annexed completely by the Race as a colony.

When the Colonization Fleet arrived in 1962, Australia was heavily colonized by the Race, and became something of a 'Lizard's Paradise' on Tosev 3. It had one of the few climates on Earth which the Race found agreeable, and that combined with its low human population (after its major cities were both destroyed) made it the most desirable area of the planet for the Race. Nonetheless, Atvar rejected the idea of moving his government seat there, as relocating from the more rebellious Cairo might have signaled weakness to the major human powers. Conversely, human Australians were treated far more oppressively by the Race than most other humans in Race-ruled countries. In effect, they were dispossessed of their country, much as they themselves had dispossessed the Australian Aboriginals a century earlier. Seeing no chance of ever throwing off the Race's yoke - indeed, seeing its colonization of Australia greatly intensified following the arrival of the Colonization Fleet - many Australians chose to emigrate. One favored destination was Canada, an English-speaking country which had avoided occupation by the Race.

When it was learned that ginger caused the Race to become sexually active at any time of the year, the Soviet Union fired missiles containing ginger and detonated them above one of the Race's colonies in Australia. This caused widespread intoxication among the members of the Race there, including Atvar, as well as a sexual orgy. The Race was unable to identify which Tosevite power ordered this attack, nor did they make any effort to investigate, as they saw the incident as little more than a prank. During the Race-German War of 1965, the Greater German Reich caused some damage to Race colonies in Australia with their nuclear submarine fleet. However, due to the distance of the continent from Germany, these weren't hit as hard as colonies in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa.

The Australian flag hung in the Emperor's throne room in Preffilo along with the flags of other Tosevite empires and not-empires conquered by Atvar, the pre-Race empires of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and the ancient empires on Home which were absorbed by the Ssumaz dynasty.

By 2031, Australia's ecology was the worst affected on Earth by Race colonization.