The Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage site, curves around the northeast coast of the state of Queensland and measures about 1200 miles long. More than 400 kinds of coral are found there, as well as about 1500 kinds of fish and other marine life. This makes the reef the longest and most complex living system in the world. The reef itself is a string of islands that are made up almost entirely of skeletons. How did this happen? Well, for millions of years tiny sea creatures called coral polyps lived and died, always leaving their porous skeletons on the ocean floor. The skeletons accumulated and gradually became as hard as rock as minerals settled into the empty spaces of the polyps. As each new layer settled onto the one below it, the reef kept building in height until it rose above the ocean's surface. The coral looks quite beautiful but it can easily rip a hole in a ship's hull and cause much destruction and even death.

           Further inland is found the Kakadu National Park, another World Heritage site. This park has 275 species of birds and many ancient examples of Aboriginal folk art, including some rock paintings that are over 20,000 years old. It is the largest national park in Australia and the third largest in the world.

           There are some species of animals, including many unusual mammals that live only in Australia and nowhere else on the earth. For example, the kangaroo, the koala and the wombat are all a type of marsupial mammal whose females have a special pouch in which to raise their young. A marsupial baby, after it is born, must pull itself up into its mother's pouch and stay there, protected, until it develops enough to take care of itself. The emu is the world's second largest bird (after the ostrich) and is one of Australia's two national animals (the other one is the kangaroo). Both emus and kangaroos can run up to thirty miles an hour. They can also swim. Koalas look like teddy bears with huge noses. Their health is delicate and they often get colds and runny noses, just like we do. They used to be hunted but now, fortunately, they are protected by the law. Not only that, some zoos actually have programs that let a family take a koala home and raise it as part of their family!