Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country located in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian. The six largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Tilburg. Amsterdam is the country's capital, while The Hague holds the seat of the States General and Supreme Court; the Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, the largest in any country outside Asia. The country is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union.
It hosts several intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are centered in The Hague, dubbed'the world's legal capital'. Netherlands means'lower countries' in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, with only about 50% of its land exceeding 1 metre above sea level, nearly 17% falling below sea level. Most of the areas below sea level, known as polders, are the result of land reclamation that began in the 16th century. With a population of 17.30 million people, all living within a total area of 41,500 square kilometres —of which the land area is 33,700 square kilometres —the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products, owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, intensive agriculture; the Netherlands was the third country in the world to have representative government, it has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848.
The country has a tradition of pillarisation and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised abortion and human euthanasia, along with maintaining a progressive drug policy. The Netherlands abolished the death penalty in 1870, allowed women's suffrage in 1917, became the world's first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, its mixed-market advanced economy had the thirteenth-highest per capita income globally. The Netherlands ranks among the highest in international indexes of press freedom, economic freedom, human development, quality of life, as well as happiness; the Netherlands' turbulent history and shifts of power resulted in exceptionally many and varying names in different languages. There is diversity within languages; this holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form and the misnomer Holland a synonym for the country "Netherlands". Dutch comes from Theodiscus and in the past centuries, the hub of Dutch culture is found in its most populous region, home to the capital city of Amsterdam.
Referring to the Netherlands as Holland in the English language is similar to calling the United Kingdom "Britain" by people outside the UK. The term is so pervasive among potential investors and tourists, that the Dutch government's international websites for tourism and trade are "holland.com" and "hollandtradeandinvest.com". The region of Holland consists of North and South Holland, two of the nation's twelve provinces a single province, earlier still, the County of Holland, a remnant of the dissolved Frisian Kingdom. Following the decline of the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders, Holland became the most economically and politically important county in the Low Countries region; the emphasis on Holland during the formation of the Dutch Republic, the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, made Holland serve as a pars pro toto for the entire country, now considered either incorrect, informal, or, depending on context, opprobrious. Nonetheless, Holland is used in reference to the Netherlands national football team.
The region called the Low Countries and the Country of the Netherlands. Place names with Neder, Nieder and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in places all over Europe, they are sometimes used in a deictic relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Oben, Superior or Haut. In the case of the Low Countries / Netherlands the geographical location of the lower region has been more or less downstream and near the sea; the geographical location of the upper region, changed tremendously over time, depending on the location of the economic and military power governing the Low Countries area. The Romans made a distinction between the Roman provinces of downstream Germania Inferior and upstream Germania Superior; the designation'Low' to refer to the region returns again in the 10th century Duchy of Lower Lorraine, that covered much of the Low Countries. But this time the corresponding Upper region is Upper Lorraine, in nowadays Northern France; the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled the Low Countries in the 15th century, used the term les pays de par deçà for the Low Countries as opposed to les pays de par delà for their original
GWN7
GWN7 is an Australian television network owned by the Prime Media Group serving all of Western Australia outside metropolitan Perth. It launched on 10 March 1967 as BTW-3 in Bunbury. An affiliate of the Seven Network, it serves one of the largest geographic television markets in the world—almost one-third of the continent; the network's name, GWN, is an acronym of Golden West Network, the network's name from 1979 to when the current name was adopted in 2011. GWN began life as a group of smaller, independent stations: Prior to these stations signing on, remote Western Australia had been one of the few areas of Australia without local television. Jack Bendat purchased South West Telecasters in 1979, changed the company's name to Golden West Network. GWN applied to broadcast an additional service on 31 October 1984, when the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal called for applications to broadcast to Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands via satellite as part of the Remote Commercial Television License scheme.
GWN was granted the Remote Commercial Television License in June 1985 and the service went to air on 18 October 1986 using the call-sign WAW. Not long after, GWN continued to expand within Western Australia, acquiring Mid-Western Television in December 1985 for A$7 million, Geraldton Telecasters in March 1987 for an undisclosed amount; the takeovers gave the network a monopoly over all commercial television services in regional Western Australia. In 1987, Bendat and Kerry Stokes merged their media interests into joint company BDC Investments; that year, Northern Star Holdings purchased BDC for A$206 million. Northern Star were forced to sell GWN to satisfy existing media regulations. GWN was sold back to Stokes in December 1988 for A$54 million, who upgraded equipment throughout the network. In April 1990, the callsigns BTW and GSW were merged, to become SSW. During the late 1980s, GWN was promoted as GWN Satellite Television and aired programs from the Nine Network plus a few from Seven and Ten with TVW's Seven News providing the national news link.
Kerry Stokes gained control of the Seven Network in 1995, attempted to sell GWN to Seven in return for more shares. Seven Network shareholders agreed to the trade in April 1996 – a deal which would have seen Seven acquire GWN for A$72.8 million thus becoming the regional network affiliate for Western Australia. The arrangement was called off when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that a 15-year exclusive programming deal GWN made with the Nine Network was anti competitive and opposed the acquisition; the Seven Network subsequently dropped their plans to purchase GWN. And as a result, the network soon ended its programming deal with Nine for exclusive broadcast of its shows in regional areas of the state. Prime Television purchased GWN in November 1996 from Stokes for A$71 million. Remote Western Australia was one of the few areas of regional Australia, not aggregated, given its small population; this ended in 1997, when WIN Television was granted the rights to a second television license in regional Western Australia, ending GWN's monopoly of all three Australian commercial channels.
In March 1999, GWN opted to become a sole Seven Network affiliate, in-line with its eastern sister, Prime Television. As a result, WIN Television WA picked up both the Nine Network Ten affiliations; the network's transmission operations were moved from Bunbury to Prime Media Group's digital broadcast facility in Canberra in April 2005. Programming is delivered to regional Western Australia via a satellite feed. A proposal for a third television station – a joint venture between GWN's parent company Prime Media Group and WIN Corporation – was submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority in 2006. Similar to Mildura Digital Television, the new channel will operate under a Section 38B licence, as a Network Ten affiliate named Ten West; the new decade saw the introduction of digital television, with the Central Wheatbelt, Kalgoorlie and Mingenew digital transmitters launching on 10 June 2010. The broadcasters shared a single digital transmitter for GWN, WIN WA and the new Ten West in standard definition.
On 15 January 2011, Prime Media Group reported that GWN and Prime were to rebrand to GWN7 and Prime7 in connection to their strong relations with the metropolitan stations of the Seven Network. Their news bulletins were renamed as GWN7 News and Prime7 News; these bulletins were relaunched on 16 January 2011 at 5:57pm. Digital transmitter upgrades continued on 28 July 2011, with Bunbury and surrounds being introduced to the full suite of digital channels for the first time, including 7TWO and 7mate. On 30 July 2011, the regional networks began broadcasting on the Viewer Access Satellite Television platform. Since becoming a full Seven affiliate, GWN7's on-air schedule has become identical to that of its metropolitan counterpart, TVW in Perth. Seven News Perth and Today Tonight are aired live across the network direct from Perth. GWN7 produces a weeknightly local news service, GWN7 Local News, shown live at 5:30pm. Since the network's inception it has featured a broad range of original regional programming including the children's program Doopa's Club featuring the station mascot Doopa Dog.
GWN7 News is the network's regional news service. Its main 30-minute program, airing live at 5:30pm on weeknights before Seven News Perth, deals with local ne
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Darwin, Northern Territory
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory of Australia, situated on the Timor Sea. It is the largest city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, with a population of 145,916, it is the smallest and most northerly of the Australian capital cities, acts as the Top End's regional centre. Darwin's proximity to South East Asia makes it a link between Australia and countries such as Indonesia and East Timor; the Stuart Highway begins in Darwin, extends southerly across central Australia through Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, concluding in Port Augusta, South Australia. The city is built upon a low bluff overlooking the harbour, its suburbs begin at Lee Point in the stretch to Berrimah in the east. Past Berrimah, the Stuart Highway goes on to its suburbs; the Darwin region, like much of the Top End, experiences a tropical climate with a wet and dry season. A period known locally as "the build up" leading up to Darwin's wet season sees temperature and humidity increase. Darwin's wet season arrives in late November to early December and brings with it heavy monsoonal downpours, spectacular lightning displays, increased cyclone activity.
During the dry season, the city has clear skies and mild sea breezes from the harbour. The greater Darwin area is the ancestral home of the Larrakia people. On 9 September 1839, HMS Beagle sailed into Darwin harbour during its survey of the area. John Clements Wickham named the region "Port Darwin" in honour of their former shipmate Charles Darwin, who had sailed with them on the ship's previous voyage which ended in October 1836; the settlement there became the town of Palmerston in 1869, but it was renamed Darwin in 1911. The city has been entirely rebuilt four times, following devastation caused by the 1897 cyclone, the 1937 cyclone, Japanese air raids during World War II, Cyclone Tracy in 1974; the Aboriginal people of the Larrakia language group are the traditional custodians and the first inhabitants of the greater Darwin area. They had trading routes with Southeast Asia, imported goods from as far afield as South and Western Australia. Established songlines penetrated throughout the country, allowing stories and histories to be told and retold along the routes.
The extent of shared songlines and history of multiple clan groups within this area is still contestable. The Dutch visited Australia's northern coastline in the 1600s and landed on the Tiwi Islands only to be repelled by the Tiwi peoples; the Dutch created the first European maps of the area. This accounts for the Dutch names such as Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt; the first British person to see Darwin harbour appears to have been Lieutenant John Lort Stokes of HMS Beagle on 9 September 1839. The ship's captain, Commander John Clements Wickham, named the port after Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who had sailed with them both on the earlier second expedition of the Beagle. In 1863, the Northern Territory was transferred from New South Wales to South Australia. In 1864 South Australia sent B. T. Finniss north as Government Resident to survey and found a capital for its new territory. Finniss chose a site at Escape Cliffs, near the entrance to Adelaide River, about 60 kilometres northeast of the modern city.
This attempt was short-lived and the settlement abandoned by 1865. On 5 February 1869, George Goyder, the Surveyor-General of South Australia, established a small settlement of 135 people at Port Darwin between Fort Hill and the escarpment. Goyder named the settlement Palmerston, after the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. In 1870, the first poles for the Overland Telegraph were erected in Darwin, connecting Australia to the rest of the world; the discovery of gold by employees of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line digging holes for telegraph poles at Pine Creek in the 1880s spawned a gold rush which further boosted the young colony's development. In February 1872 the brigatine Alexandra was the first private vessel to set sail from an English port directly to Darwin, carrying people many of whom were coming to recent gold finds. In early 1875 Darwin's white population had grown to 300 because of the gold rush. On 17 February 1875 the SS Gothenburg left Darwin en route for Adelaide.
The 88 passengers and 34 crew included government officials, circuit-court judges, Darwin residents taking their first furlough, miners. While travelling south along the north Queensland coast, the Gothenburg encountered a cyclone-strength storm and was wrecked on a section of the Great Barrier Reef. Only 22 men survived, while between 112 people perished. Many passengers who perished were Darwin residents and news of the tragedy affected the small community, which took several years to recover. In the 1870s large numbers of Chinese settled at least temporarily in the Northern Territory. By 1888 there were 6122 Chinese in the Northern Territory in or around Darwin; the early Chinese settlers were from the Kwantung Province in south China. However at the end of the nineteenth century anti-Chinese feelings grew in response to the 1890s economic depression and the White Australia policy meant many Chinese left the Territory. However, some families stayed and became Australian citizens, established a commercial base in Darwin.
Darwin became the city's official name in 1911. The period between 1911 and 1919 was filled with political turmoil with trade union unrest, which culminated on 17 December 1918. Led by Harold Nelson, some 1000 demonstrators marched to Government House at Liberty
Arnhem Land
Arnhem Land is one of the five regions of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around 500 km from the territory capital Darwin; the region has an area of 97,000 km2, which covers the area of Kakadu National Park, a population of 16,230. In 1623, Dutch East India Company captain William van Colster sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape Arnhem is named after his ship, the Arnhem, which itself was named after the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands; the area covers about 97,000 km2 and has an estimated population of 16,000, of whom 12,000 are Yolngu, the traditional owners. The region's service hub is Nhulunbuy, 600 km east of Darwin, set up in the early 1970s as a mining town. Other major population centres are Yirrkala, Gunbalanya and Maningrida. A substantial proportion of the population, Aboriginal, lives on small outstations; this outstation movement started in the early 1980s. Many Aboriginal groups moved to very small settlements on their traditional lands to escape the problems on the larger townships.
These population groups have little Western influence culturally speaking, Arnhem Land is arguably one of the last areas in Australia that could be seen as a separate country. Many of the region's leaders have called and continue to call for a treaty that would allow the Yolngu to operate under their own traditional laws. In 2013–14, the entire region contributed around $1.3 billion or 7% to the Northern Territory's gross state product through bauxite mining. Arnhem Land has been occupied by indigenous people for tens of thousands of years and is the location of the oldest-known stone axe, which scholars believe to be 35,500 years old; the Gove Peninsula was involved in the defence of Australia during World War II. At least since the 18th century Muslim traders from Makassar of Sulawesi visited Arnhem Land each year to trade and process sea cucumbers or trepang; this marine animal is prized in Chinese cuisine, for folk medicine, as an aphrodisiac. This Macassan contact with Australia is the first recorded example of interaction between the inhabitants of the Australian continent and their Asian neighbours.
This contact had a major effect on local indigenous Australians. The Makassans exchanged goods such as cloth, knives and alcohol for the right to trepang coastal waters and employ local labour. Makassar pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast among several indigenous Australian groups who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Makassan culture; these traders from the southwest corner of Sulawesi introduced the word balanda for white people, long before western explorers set foot on the coasts of northern Australia. In Arnhem Land, the word is still used today to refer to white Australians; the Dutch started settling in Sulawesi Island in the early 17th century. Archeological remains of Makassar contact, including trepang processing plants from the 18th and 19th centuries, are still found at Australian locations such as Port Essington and Groote Eylandt; the Makassans planted tamarind trees. After processing, the sea slugs were traded by the Makassans to Southern China.
In 2014, an 18th-century Chinese coin was found in the remote area of Wessel Islands off the coast on a beach on Elcho Island during a historical expedition. The coin was found near known Macassan trepanger fishing sites where several other Dutch coins have been discovered nearby, but never a Chinese coin; the coin was made in Beijing around 1735. The area is from Port Roper on the Gulf of Carpentaria around the coast to the East Alligator River, where it adjoins Kakadu National Park; the major centres are Jabiru on the Kakadu National Park border, Maningrida at the Liverpool River mouth, Nhulunbuy in the far north-east, on the Gove Peninsula. Gove is the site of large-scale bauxite mining with an associated alumina refinery, its administrative centre is the town of Nhulunbuy, the fourth-largest population centre in the Northern Territory. The climate of Arnhem Land is tropical monsoon with a dry season; the temperature has little seasonal variation. Declared an Aboriginal Reserve in 1931, it remains one of the largest Aboriginal Reserves in Australia and is best known for its isolation, the art of its people, the strong continuing traditions of its indigenous inhabitants.
Northeast Arnhem Land is home to the indigenous Yolngu people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Australia, who have succeeded in maintaining a vigorous traditional indigenous culture. The Malays and Makassans are believed to have had contact with the coastal Aboriginal groups and traded with them prior to European settlement of Australia; the 2006 film Ten Canoes captures life in Arnhem Land through a story tapping into the Aboriginal mythic past. The film and the documentary about the making of the film, The Balanda and the Bark Canoes, give a remarkable testimony to the indigenous struggle to keep their culture alive – or rather revive it in the wake of considerable relative modernisation and influence of white cultural imposition; the Aboriginal community of Yirrkala, just outside Nhulunbuy, is internationally known for bark paintings, promoting the rights of Indige
Qantas
Qantas Airways is the flag carrier of Australia and its largest airline by fleet size, international flights and international destinations. It is the third oldest airline in the world, after KLM and Avianca having been founded in November 1920; the Qantas name comes from "QANTAS", an acronym for its original name, "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services", it is nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo". Qantas is a founding member of the Oneworld airline alliance; the airline is based in the Sydney suburb of Mascot with its main hub at Sydney Airport. As of March 2014, Qantas had a 65% share of the Australian domestic market and carried 14.9% of all passengers travelling in and out of Australia. Various subsidiary airlines operate to regional centres and on some trunk routes within Australia under the QantasLink banner. Qantas owns Jetstar Airways, a low-cost airline that operates both international services from Australia and domestic services within Australia and New Zealand. Qantas was founded in Winton, Queensland on 16 November 1920 by Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness and Fergus McMaster as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited.
The airline's first aircraft was an Avro 504K. In 1920 Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd had its headquarters in Winton before moving to Longreach, Queensland in 1921 and Brisbane, Queensland in 1930. In 1934, QANTAS and Britain's Imperial Airways formed Qantas Empire Airways Limited; the new airline commenced operations in December 1934, flying between Darwin. QEA flew internationally from May 1935. After World War II began, enemy action and accidents destroyed half of the fleet of ten, when most of the fleet was taken over by the Australian government for war service. Flying boat services were resumed in 1943, with flights between the Swan River at Crawley in Perth, Western Australia and Koggala lake in Ceylon; this linked up with the British Overseas Airways Corporation service to London. Qantas' kangaroo logo was first used on the "Kangaroo Route", begun in 1944, from Sydney to Karachi, where BOAC crews took over for the rest of the journey to the UK. In 1947, QEA was nationalised by the Australian government led by Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley.
QANTAS Limited was wound up. After nationalisation, Qantas' remaining domestic network, in Queensland, was transferred to the nationally owned Trans Australia Airlines, leaving Qantas with a purely international network. Shortly after nationalisation, QEA began its first services outside the British Empire – to Tokyo. Services to Hong Kong began around the same time. In 1957 a head office, Qantas House, opened in Sydney. In June 1959 Qantas entered the jet age. On 14 September 1992, Qantas merged with Australian Airlines; the airline started to be rebranded to Qantas in the following year. Qantas was privatised between 1993 and 1997. Under the legislation passed to allow the privatisation, Qantas must be at least 51% owned by Australian shareholders. In 1998, Qantas co-founded the Oneworld alliance with American Airlines, British Airways, Canadian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, with other airlines joining subsequently. With the entry of new budget airline Virgin Blue into the domestic market in 2000, Qantas' market share fell.
Qantas created the budget Jetstar Airways in 2001 to compete. The main domestic competitor to Qantas, Ansett Australia, collapsed on 14 September 2001. Market share for Qantas neared 90%, but competition with Virgin increased as it expanded. Qantas revived the Australian Airlines name for a short-lived international budget airline between 2002 and 2006, but this subsidiary was shut down in favour of expanding Jetstar internationally, including to New Zealand. In 2004, the Qantas group expanded into the Asian budget airline market with Jetstar Asia Airways, in which Qantas owns a minority stake. A similar model was used for the investment into Jetstar Pacific, headquartered in Vietnam, in 2007, Jetstar Japan, launched in 2012. In December 2006, Qantas was the subject of a failed bid from a consortium calling itself Airline Partners Australia. Merger talks with British Airways in 2008 did not proceed to an agreement. In 2011, an industrial relations dispute between Qantas and the Transport Workers Union of Australia resulted in the grounding of all Qantas aircraft and lock-out of the airline's staff for two days.
On 25 March 2018, a Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliner became the first aircraft to operate a scheduled non-stop commercial flight between Australia and Europe, with the inaugural arrival in London of Flight 9. QF9 was a 17-hour, 14,498 km journey from Perth Airport in Western Australia to London Heathrow; the key trends for the Qantas Group, are shown below: Qantas' headquarters are located at the Qantas Centre in the Bayside Council suburb of Mascot, New South Wales. The headquarters underwent a redevelopment, completed in December 2013. Qantas has operated a number of passenger airline subsidiaries since inception
Narrow-barred Spanish mackerel
The narrow-barred Spanish mackerel is a mackerel of the Scombridae family found in a wide-ranging area centering in Southeast Asia, but as far west as the east coast of Africa and from the Middle East and along the northern coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, as far east as the South West Pacific Ocean. They are vivid blue to dark grey in colour along their backs and flanks and fade to a silvery blue-grey on the belly. Spanish mackerel have scores of vertical lines down their sides. Spanish mackerel are the largest of all Australian mackerels, growing to about 200 cm and up to 70 kg, it is found in a wide area centering in Southeast Asia, but as far west as the east coast of Africa and from the Persian Gulf and along the northern coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, as far east as Fiji in the South West Pacific ocean. They are common down both sides of Australia as far south as Perth on the west coast and Sydney on the east coast, they are found as far north as China and Japan. It has colonised the Mediterranean as a Lessepsian migrant from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal, being first recorded off Palestine in the 1930s and it is now common in the eastern Mediterranean, having become an important quarry species for local fisheries.
Spanish mackerel spawn in oceanic conditions on reef edges. Eggs have a large oil droplet that aids in buoyancy and keeps them at the top of the water column, warmer, well oxygenated, has an abundant planktonic food supply for the larvae once they are hatched; when in the larval stage, Spanish mackerel are believed to stay in their own species-specific groups and are not found with other species of the same genus, such as S. semifasciatus and S. queenslandicus. This is not always the case with adult mackerel, where occasional mixing of different species within the same genus can occur. Spawning is seasonal. Many of the fisheries that target this species are based on prespawning feeding aggregations. A significant proportion of the female fish caught in NT waters between July and December have either spawned or are close to spawning. In general, spawning times for Spanish mackerel tend to be associated with higher water temperatures that promote optimal food availability for the rapid growth and development of the larvae.
As the young larvae grow, they move from the offshore spawning grounds to inshore and estuarine habitats, where they are found in the juvenile phase of their growth cycle. In the inshore environments, they feed on the larvae and juveniles of small fish and crustaceans until they become large enough to eat small fish and squid. Australian studies of this species suggest. Female Spanish mackerel mature around 80 cm in length. Spanish mackerel are opportunistic carnivores; as with other members of the genus, food consists of small fishes with lesser quantities of shrimp and squid. Spanish mackerel are valued fish throughout their range in the Indo West Pacific. Recreational anglers catch them from boats while trolling or drifting and from boats, piers and beaches by casting spoons and jigs, live-bait fishing. Commercial methods are run-around gill netting, by trolling lures similar to those used by recreational anglers. In the NT all Spanish mackerel licences are trolling only a small percentage of the catch is gill netted from boats which target Grey mackerel.
As most fish, the narrow-barred Spanish mackerel is infected by a variety of parasites. Spectacular parasites are the cysts of the larvae of the trypanorhynch cestode Callitetrarhynchus gracilis found in great numbers in the body cavity; these parasites represent no danger to humans. Pakistan: Surmei سرمٸ South Africa: king mackerel, cuda Malaysia: tenggiri Australia: narrow-bar, narrow-barred mackerel, Spaniard, Spanish mackerel USA: barred mackerel, narrow-barred mackerel, striped seer Arabia: " abu sinn", "ghazal", kanad or kana'd mackerel India: konem in Telugu, vanjaram in Tamil, anjal in Tulu Iran: shir mahi شیرماهی Israel: Palamida Philippines: tanigue Indonesia: ikan tenggiri Sri Lanka: Thora Somalia: Yuumbi Fiji: walu Thailand: plā xinthrī Fisheries Western Australia - Spanish Mackerel
