Australia In Property Victoria Sources of australia in property victoria information from the Web

According to Reporters Without Borders in 2004, Australia is in 41st position on a list of countries ranked by Press Freedom; well behind New Zealand (9th) and United Kingdom (28th). With the Howard government taking control of the Senate in mid-2005 after the 2004 election, media ownership regulations are likely to be relaxed so as to allow the further concentration of media ownership in the hands of a couple of entities.

Violet Crumble is an Australian chocolate bar that is manufactured in Sydney, Australia. The slogan for the chocolate bar is "It's the way it shatters that matters". The chocolate bar is a crumbly honeycomb-like substance coated in chocolate, made from ingredients like sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), gelatin, glucose syrup and emulsifiers. The center of Violet Crumble is similar to the center of a Butterfinger. Violet Crumble is common in Hawaii but it can also be found in other places.

Many Perth residents consider their city to be egalitarian and relaxed, with a relatively large middle class and a suburban lifestyle; however, as with all large cities, Perth does have pockets of extreme wealth and poverty. The population is easy-going and friendly, but can be parochial, especially towards the "Eastern States" which are often viewed with deep, but usually jocular, suspicion. This attitude can be attributed mainly to isolation — reflected in the widely-held belief that Perth is "the world's most isolated capital city".

Melbourne was the only city in the Southern Hemisphere in which the Three Tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras) performed on their world tour in 1997, and the only city in the world to host the Kiss Symphony, a combined performance of the rock band KISS and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2003.

Australia has a prosperous Western-style capitalist economy, with a per capita GDP at the level of the four dominant West European economies; its developed market economy is dominated by its services sector (65% of GDP), yet it is the agricultural and mining sectors (7% of GDP combined) that account for the bulk (58%) of Australia's goods and services exports.

Many raw materials (including resources postulated to exist but yet to be discovered) remain mostly unexploited. Australia is often referred to by economists as the "world's farm", but despite this emphasis on the agriculture sector, in recent years the Australian government has been focusing on the tourism, education and technology markets.

The first English explorers were Willem Dampier on the west coast of the continent in 1688, and Lieutenant James Cook who, in 1770, claimed the eastern two-thirds of the continent for Britain, despite orders from King George III to first conclude a treaty with the indigenous population. His report to London that Australia was uninhabited (see Terra nullius) provided impetus for the establishment of a penal colony there following the loss of the American colonies.

Melbourne's own vibrant music scene has fostered many internationally renowned artists and musicians, with links to Nick Cave, Crowded House, AC/DC, John Farnham, Graeme Bell and Kylie Minogue.

Immigration has been a major factor in Australia's development since the beginning of European settlement in 1788. For generations, most settlers came from Britain and Ireland, and the people of Australia are still predominantly of British or Irish origin, with a culture and outlook similar to that of the United Kingdom and the United States.

Although Australia has scarcely more than two persons per square kilometer of total land area, this raw figure is highly misleading: most of the continent is desert or semi-desert and of no agricultural value. In consequence, Australia is one of the world's most urbanized countries: less than 15% of the population live in rural areas.