Australia is made up of six states and two territories which, it may surprise you to learn, do not get along together terribly well. There is considerable rivalry between them, exemplified, perhaps, by the fact that for many years all the states had different railway guages so that to travel by train from Melbourne to Sydney you had to get out of the train at the border between Victoria and New South Wales and get into a different train for the rest of the journey!
Our first - and probably our only - reports for this trip come from New South Wales and the area around its capital city, Sydney.
The "More info" link takes you to a book about the beginning of European settlement in Australia. As Australians like to boast, they were selected for emmigration by Britain's finest judges! Another enjoyable, if dated, book is We of the Never Never which gives a somewhat idealised view of life in Australia's "Outback" in the early 1900s.