Australia is The Land Down Under where Ramon Eduardo and Lisa come to live many years ago. Aboriginal people have lived in this unique natural environment 50,000 thousand years. At contact there was no single, homogeneous Aboriginal society. Groups differed in aspects of their cultural and social organization. Existence of widespread social networks meant that people had to be multilingual to communicate. In the North Territory, over 100 different languages were spoken. Australia's biggest attraction is its natural beauty. The landscape varies from endless sunbaked horizons to dense tropical rainforest to chilly southern beaches. Scattered along the coasts, its cities blend a European enthusiasm for art and food with a laid-back love of sport and the outdoors. Australia is a multi cultural country, so it's not unusual to walk down a city street and hear people speaking Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Vietnamese or Arabic as their first language. Aboriginal languages are also spoken. Summer (December to February) can get uncomfortably hot but it's great beach weather. Up north, the summer-wet season is very, very humid and the sea is swarming with box jellyfish. Winter (June to August) offers skiing in NSW and Victoria. In spring and autumn the weather is mild. As you see, any time of the year is a good time to visit Australia. Visitors expecting to see an opera in Sydney one night and meet Crocodile Dundee the next will have to rethink their grasp of geography in this huge country. It is this sheer vastness that gives Australia and its diverse population much of its character.English speaking Australians have a passion for abbreviations and are liable to use a hotchpotch of local slang that can take the first time visitor a while to untangle.