Portal:Australia/Featured article/2005

Featured articles
April

Kylie Minogue is an Australian singer and actress. She rose to prominence in the late 1980s as a result of her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a pop singer and recording artist. Signed to a contract by British songwriters and record producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Minogue achieved a string of hit records throughout the world, but her popularity began to decline by the early 1990s, leading her to part company from them in 1992. For several years she attempted to establish herself as an independent performer and songwriter, distancing herself from her earlier work. Her projects were widely publicised, but despite a couple of hit singles, her albums failed to attract a substantial audience, resulting in the lowest sales of her career. In 2000, she returned to popularity as a dance/pop music artist and became well-known for her provocative music videos and expensively mounted stage shows. In Europe and Australia, Minogue has become one of her generation's most recognisable celebrities and sex symbols.

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May

Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated Darwin, Australia, from December 24 to December 25, 1974. It was recorded by The Age as being a "disaster of the first magnitude...without parallel in Australia's history." It killed 65 people and destroyed over 70 percent of Darwin's buildings, leaving over 20,000 people homeless. Most of Darwin's population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs and Sydney, and many never returned to Darwin. The town was subsequently rebuilt with newer materials and techniques. Cyclone Tracy was at least a Category 4 storm, although there is evidence to suggest that it had reached Category 5 when it reached Darwin. Cyclone Tracy, due to its severity, has entered into Australian popular culture in a way that no other meteorological event had before, or has since. Probably the most famous work that it has inspired is the song by Bill Cate, "Santa Never Made it into Darwin". Composed in 1974 to raise money for the relief and reconstruction effort, the song became so wide-known that in 1983 the Hoodoo Gurus released a song entitled "Tojo Never Made it to Darwin", inspired by Bill Cate's song and about the Japanese bombing of Darwin in World War II.

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June Lake Burley Griffin is a large lake in the centre of the Canberra, Australia's federal capital city. It was created in 1963 after the Molonglo River, which runs through the city centre, was dammed. It is named after Walter Burley Griffin, the architect who won the design competition for the city of Canberra. It should be noted that 'Burley' was Griffin's middle name, not part of his surname. The lake is located in the approximate geographic centre of the city, according to Griffin's original designs. Numerous important institutions, such as the National Library of Australia lie on its shores, and Parliament House is a short distance away. Its surrounds are also quite popular with recreational users, particularly in the warmer months. Though swimming in the lake is uncommon, it is used for a wide variety of other activities, such as rowing, fishing, and sailing. The lake's flow is regulated by the 33 metre tall Scrivener Dam, which is designed to handle a once in 5000 year flood event. In times of drought, water levels can fall below desired limits; so to compensate, water is released from the Googong Dam, located on a tributary of the Molonglo River.

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August

The Tasmanian Devil is a carnivorous marsupial found exclusively on the Australian island of Tasmania. At the size of a small dog, but stocky and muscular, the Tasmanian Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world. The devil is characterised by its black fur, offensive odour when stressed, extremely loud and disturbing screech, and vicious temperament when feeding. Known to hunt, as well as to scavenge carrion, communal eating is one of the few social activities in which the usually solitary devil participates. The Tasmanian Devil became extinct on the Australian mainland about 400 years prior to European settlement in 1788. The people of Tasmania saw devils as a threat to livestock and hunted them until 1941, when the animals were officially protected. Since the late 1990s devil facial tumour disease has reduced the devil population significantly and threatens the survival of the species. The impact of the disease on devil population may lead to listing of the devil as an endangered species.

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September

Mark Latham is an Australian politician and was leader of the federal parliamentary Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition in Australia from December 2003 to January 2005. He succeeded Simon Crean as leader in December 2003, defeating former leader Kim Beazley in a close vote. Latham captured national attention with his innovative policies and approaches, but also attracted controversy regarding his interesting past. In the October 2004 federal election, Latham and his party were soundly defeated by the incumbent Prime Minister John Howard. Ill-health and deteriorating relations with his own party forced him to step down as Leader on January 18, 2005. In September, Latham caused much controversy with the release a set of diaries in which he attacked many of his former colleagues.

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October Canberra is the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia and, with a population of just over 323,000, is also Australia's largest inland city. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory, 300 km southwest of Sydney, and 650 km northeast of Melbourne. Unique in Australia as an entirely purpose-built, planned city, Canberra was selected as the location of the National Capital in 1908. Following an international contest for the city's design, a design by Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin was selected and construction commenced in 1913. The city's design was heavily influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have earned Canberra the title "bush capital". Although the growth and development of Canberra was hindered by the World Wars and the Great Depression, it emerged as a thriving city post-World War II.

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November The Shrine of Remembrance, located in St Kilda Road, Melbourne, is one of the largest war memorials in Australia. It was built as a memorial to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I, but soon came to be seen as Australia's major memorial to all the 60,000 Australians who died in that war. It now serves as a memorial for all Australians who served in war and it is the site of annual observances of ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day. The Shrine's design, by Melbourne architects (and war veterans) Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop, is based on the ancient Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It features a massive pyramid-shaped structure, with classical porticos at the head of wide flights of steps on the northern and southern sides. After overcoming intense criticism of its grandiosity, the foundation stone was laid on 11 November 1927 and in 1934 the Duke of Gloucester formally dedicated the Shrine to a crowd of 300,000.

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November (Anniversary Special) The Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 is generally regarded as the most significant domestic political and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. The Crisis began in the Australian Senate, where the Liberal-National Party Coalition had gained a majority. The Coalition used its numbers to defer voting on bills that appropriated funds for government expenditure, in an attempt to force the Prime Minister to dissolve the House of Representatives and call an election. This action was unprecedented in Australian history, and has not been attempted since. The Labor Government, led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, refused a general election, and attempted to pressure Liberal Senators to support the bills. The impasse continued for some weeks, during which the threat of the government being unable to meet its financial obligations hung over the country. The crisis ended in a dramatic fashion on 11 November 1975 when the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, controversially sacked Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed his Liberal opponent Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister. Kerr did so having secured an undertaking from Fraser that he would seek a dissolution of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, thus precipitating a general election.

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November 24

Waterfall Gully is a small suburb of 2,285 people in the South Australian city of Adelaide. It is located in the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges around five kilometres east of Adelaide's central business district (CBD). For the most part, the suburb encompasses one long gully with First Creek at its centre and Waterfall Gully Road adjacent to the creek. At one end of the gully is the waterfall for which the suburb was named. Part of the Burnside Council, it is bounded to the north by the suburb of Burnside, to the north-east by Greenhill, to the south-east by Cleland Conservation Park, to the south-west by Leawood Gardens and to the north-west by Mount Osmond. Waterfall Gully is rich in history and has been a popular attraction since Adelaide's early colonists discovered the area in the nineteenth century. Home to a number of residents and increasingly frequented by tourists, Waterfall Gully has undergone extensive developments in recent years.

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December 8 Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant (1864 – 27 February 1902) was an Anglo-Australian drover, horseman, poet and soldier whose renowned skill with horses earned him the nickname "The Breaker". Articulate, intelligent and well educated, he was also a published poet and became one of the better-known "back-block bards" of the 1890s, with the bulk of his work appearing in The Bulletin magazine. During his service in the Boer War, Morant ordered the summary execution of several Afrikaner and African prisoners, which led to his controversial court-martial and execution for murder by the British Army; his death warrant was personally signed by the British commander in South Africa, Lord Kitchener. In the century since his death, Morant has become a folk hero in Australia. His story has been the subject of several books and a major Australian feature film. Even during his lifetime there was a great deal of conflicting information about this romantic but elusive figure, and many of the stories about him are undoubtedly apocryphal.

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