Postcodes in Australia
Postcodes are used in Australia to more efficiently sort and route mail within the Australian postal system. Postcodes in Australia are placed at the end of the Australian address. Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the Postmaster-General's Department and are now managed by Australia Post, are published in booklets available from post offices or online from the Australia Post website. Australian envelopes and postcards have four square boxes printed in orange at the bottom right for the postcode; these are used. Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the Postmaster-General's Department to replace earlier postal sorting systems, such as Melbourne's letter and number codes and a similar system used in rural and regional New South Wales; the introduction of the postcodes coincided with the introduction of a large-scale mechanical mail sorting system in Australia, starting with the Sydney GPO. By 1968, 75% of mail was using postcodes, in the same year post office preferred-size envelopes were introduced, which came to be referred to as “standard envelopes”.
Postcode squares were introduced in June 1990 to enable Australia Post to use optical character recognition software in its mail sorting machines to automatically and more sort mail by postcodes. Australian postcodes consist of four digits, are written after the name of the city, suburb, or town, the state or territory: Mr John Smith 100 Flushcombe Road BLACKTOWN NSW 2148When writing an address by hand, a row of four boxes is pre-printed on the lower right hand corner of an envelope, the postcode may be written in the boxes. If addressing a letter from outside Australia, the postcode is recorded before'Australia'. Australian postcodes are sorting information, they are linked with one area. Due to post code rationalisation, they can be quite complex in country areas; the south-western Victoria 3221 postcode of the Geelong Mail Centre includes twenty places around Geelong with few people. This means that mail for these places is not sorted until it gets to Geelong; some postcodes cover large populations, while other postcodes have much smaller populations in urban areas.
Australian postcodes range from 0200 for the Australian National University to 9944 for Cannonvale, Queensland. Some towns and suburbs have two postcodes — one for street deliveries and another for post office boxes. For example, a street address in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta would be written like this: Mr John Smith 99 George Street PARRAMATTA NSW 2150But mail sent to a PO Box in Parramatta would be addressed: Mr John Smith PO Box 99 PARRAMATTA NSW 2124Many large businesses, government departments and other institutions receiving high volumes of mail had their own postcode as a Large Volume Receiver, e.g. the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital has the postcode 4029, the Australian National University had the postcode 0200. More postcode ranges were made available for LVRs in the 1990s. Australia Post has been progressively discontinuing the LVR programme since 2006; the first one or two numbers show the state or territory that the postcode belongs to Sometimes near the state and territory borders, Australia Post finds it easier to send mail through a nearby post office, across the border: Some of the postcodes above may cover two or more states.
For example, postcode 2620 covers both a locality in NSW as well as a locality in the ACT, postcode 0872 covers a number of localities across WA, SA, NT and QLD. Three locations straddle the NSW-Queensland border. Jervis Bay Territory, once an exclave of the ACT but now a separate territory, is geographically located on the coast of NSW, it is just south of the towns of Huskisson, with which it shares a postcode. Mail to the Jervis Bay Territory is still addressed to the ACT; the numbers used to show the state on each radio callsign in Australia are the same number as the first number for postcodes in that state, e.g. 2xx in New South Wales, 3xx in Victoria, etc. Radio callsigns pre-date postcodes in Australia by more than forty years. Australia's external territories are included in Australia Post's postcode system. While these territories do not belong to any state, they are addressed as such for mail sorting: Three scientific bases in Antarctica operated by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions share a postcode with the isolated sub-Antarctic island of Macquarie Island: Each state's capital city ends with three zeroes, while territorial capital cities end with two zeroes.
Capital city postcodes were the lowest postcodes in their state or territory range, before new ranges for LVRs and PO Boxes were made available. The last number can be changed from "0" to "1" to get the postcode for General Post Office boxes in any capital city: While the first number of a postcode shows the state or territory, the second number shows a region within the state. However, postcodes with the same second number are not always next to each other; as an example, postcodes in the range 2200–2299 are split between the southern suburbs of Sydney and the Central Coast of New South Wales. Postcodes with a second number of "0" or "1" are always located within the metropolitan area of the state's capital city. Postcodes with higher secon
Netball
Netball is a ball sport played by two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s. By 1960, international playing rules had been standardised for the game, the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball was formed; as of 2011, the INF comprises more than 60 national teams organized into five global regions. Games are played on a rectangular court with raised goal rings at each end; each team attempts to score goals by passing a ball down the court and shooting it through its goal ring. Players are assigned specific positions, which define their roles within the team and restrict their movement to certain areas of the court. During general play, a player with the ball can hold on to it for only three seconds before shooting for a goal or passing to another player; the winning team is the one. Netball games are 60 minutes long. Variations have been developed to increase the game's appeal to a wider audience. Netball is most popular in Commonwealth nations in schools, is predominantly played by women.
According to the INF, netball is played by more than 20 million people in more than 80 countries. Major domestic leagues in the sport include the Netball Superleague in Great Britain, Suncorp Super Netball in Australia and the ANZ Premiership in New Zealand. Four major competitions take place internationally: the quadrennial World Netball Championships, the Commonwealth Games, the yearly Quad Series and Fast5 Series. In 1995, netball became an International Olympic Committee recognised sport, but it has not been played at the Olympics. Netball emerged from early versions of basketball and evolved into its own sport as the number of women participating in sports increased. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in the United States; the game was played indoors between two teams of nine players, using an association football, thrown into closed-end peach baskets. Naismith's game spread across the United States and variations of the rules soon emerged. Physical education instructor Senda Berenson developed modified rules for women in 1892.
Around this time separate intercollegiate rules were developed for women. The various basketball rules converged into a universal set in the United States. Martina Bergman-Österberg introduced a version of basketball in 1893 to her female students at the Physical Training College in Hampstead, London; the rules of the game were modified at the college over several years: the game moved outdoors and was played on grass. Österberg's new sport acquired the name "net ball". The first codified rules of netball were published in 1901 by the Ling Association the Physical Education Association of the United Kingdom. From England, netball spread to other countries in the British Empire. Variations of the rules and names for the sport arose in different areas: "women's basketball" arrived in Australia around 1900 and in New Zealand from 1906, while "netball" was being played in Jamaican schools by 1909. From the start, it was considered appropriate for women to play netball. Netball became a popular women's sport in countries where it was introduced and spread through school systems.
School leagues and domestic competitions emerged during the first half of the 20th century, in 1924 the first national governing body was established in New Zealand. International competition was hampered by a lack of funds and varying rules in different countries. Australia hosted New Zealand in the first international game of netball in Melbourne on 20 August 1938. Efforts began in 1957 to standardise netball rules globally: by 1960 international playing rules had been standardised, the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball the International Netball Federation, was formed to administer the sport worldwide. Representatives from England, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies were part of a 1960 meeting in Sri Lanka that standardised the rules for the game; the game spread to other African countries in the 1970s. South Africa was prohibited from competing internationally from 1969 to 1994 due to apartheid. In the United States, Netball's popularity increased during the 1970s in the New York area, the United States of America Netball Association was created in 1992.
The game became popular in the Pacific Island nations of the Cook Islands and Samoa during the 1970s. Netball Singapore was created in 1962, the Malaysian Netball Association was created in 1978. In Australia, the term women's basketball was used to refer to both basketball. During the 1950s and 1960s, a movement arose to change the Australian name of the game from women's basketball to netball in order to avoid confusion between the two sports; the Australian Basketball Union offered to pay the costs involved to alter the name, but the netball organisation rejected the change. In 1970, the Council of the All Australia Netball Association changed the name to "netball" in Australia. In 1963, the first international tournament was held in England. Called the World Tournament, it became known as the World Netball Championships. Following the first tournament, one of the organisers, Miss R. Harris, declared,England could learn
Mount Hotham
Mount Hotham is a mountain in the Victorian Alps of the Great Dividing Range, located in the Australian state of Victoria. The mountain is located 357 kilometres north east of Melbourne, 746 kilometres from Sydney, 997 kilometres from Adelaide by road; the nearest major road to mountain is the Great Alpine Road. The mountain is named after Charles Hotham, Governor of Victoria from 1854 to 1855. Mt Hotham's summit rises to an altitude of 1,862 metres AHD. Hotham Alpine Resort, a commercial ski resort, is located on the slopes of Mount Hotham and adjoining mountains. Alpine National Park List of mountains in Victoria The Official site for Melbourne, Australia: Mount Hotham
Benambra, Victoria
Benambra is a small town 28 kilometres north-east of Omeo and 430 kilometres east of the state capital Melbourne, in the Australian Alps of East Gippsland, Australia. Nearby towns include Swifts Creek and the major town of Bairnsdale. At the 2016 census and the surrounding area had a population of 149. Benambra town centre is at the intersection of Gibbo Street and Limestone Road, at an altitude of 700m; the town has a population of around 150, although most residents live on farms and properties out of the actual town. From its early days Benambra has been regarded as a premier agricultural area, specialising in both sheep and cattle farming; the annual weaner calf sales, held in March, attract buyers from across Australia who are seeking high quality predominantly Hereford and Hereford Shorthorn Cross calves on offer. Merino sheep are raised for wool, there is a small amount of cropping in the area; the timber industry employs a small number of people in harvesting and transportation of the logs to mills in other areas.
Mining was once a significant employer in the area, but only occasional forays are conducted. For the tourist, the area offers beautiful mountain scenery, crystal clear trout fishing streams, an assortment of picturesque bush walking trails, including those of the Alpine National Park; the town of Benambra is on the shores of Lake Omeo which can serve as a tourist attraction, however this lake only irregularly holds water at present. During wetter times a pier and public toilets were built at the top end of the lake furthest from the town where the lake is at its maximum depth; the depth varies when full from about 3m at the top end to about 1m at the town end, where the lake will flood across the sealed road. When holding sufficient water, the lake has hosted sailing, speed boat races. Benambra was one of the first regions of Victoria to be settled by Europeans; the Aboriginal history from this area is not well recorded. There was a mountain clan, the Ja-itma-thang, centred on the Omeo area, but this clan would have interacted with nearby tribes, including the Gunai or Kurnai of Gippsland proper.
Population levels are uncertain, but were highly underestimated by European settlers with consideration given to the fact that observation in the mountains and forests of Gippsland is far more difficult than in the more open parts of Australia. What is clear is that like elsewhere, population levels declined following European occupation due to both disease and conflict, people from this clan are no longer found in the area. Unlike most of Australia, where exploration went inland from the sea, the Gippsland region was first explored and settled by Europeans who came overland from the Monaro region of New South Wales and headed down to the coastal regions; this could be seen as a natural expansion of the first settlements of Australia radiating out from Sydney, but to do so the settlers had to cross the not insignificant barrier of the Australian Alps. In fact the first to arrive via this route were not explorers in the traditional sense, but ordinary stockmen pushing out to expand their range.
The route they found put them in the Omeo region, with access through present day Benambra. First to arrive was James MacFarlane in late 1834, in 1835 he returned with two other Highland Scots, George MacKillop and Livingstone, all settling on the Omeo Plains. MacFarlane returned to the Monaro and brought cattle back to the Benambra area in 1836; this formed Gippsland’s first squatting run. The Scots were soon followed by four Irish cattlemen from the Monaro. John Pendergast was at Lake Omeo by 1836, John Hyland took up a run at Hinnomunjie, Edmund Buckley moved to Tongio Munjie and Ensay, south of Omeo, in 1836, his stepson, Patrick Buckley, was at Benambra by 1839. Many of these surnames are still common in the area. By the time of 1839 and 1840 wealthy landholders in New South Wales had become interested in the Gippsland region and funded further exploration of the region; the key explorations around this time were those of another Scot, Angus McMillan, a Polish scientist-explorer, Count Paul Strzelecki.
Both of these expedition parties passed through the established lands around Benambra and Omeo heading south towards the coast, both were assisted by the McFarlane family. McMillan completed several expeditions, while he was not the first to visit many locations, his explorations were the most important in terms of European settlement of Gippsland proper. On his final expedition he located a suitable port at present day Port Albert; the route established by McMillan remains the same major north-south route through Gippsland to this day. This route follows the Great Alpine Road south through the Tambo Valley to Bruthen west to Bairnsdale and Sale along the Princes Highway south from Sale to Port Albert. For several decades Gippsland operated on this north-south axis, following this route from Benambra and Omeo to Port Albert, but in the 1860s a road was opened from Melbourne to the east, this was followed a couple of decades by a rail line and a Post Office opened on 16 June 1886; these developments, along with development of significant east-west shipping on the Gippsland Lakes at the time, reoriented trav
Mitta Mitta River
Mitta Mitta River, a perennial river and a direct tributary of the Murray River within the Murray-Darling basin, is located in the alpine district of Victoria, Australia. The name Mitta Mitta derives from the Aboriginal word mida-modoenga, meaning reeds called modunga; the river rises below Mount Bogong, the highest mountain in the Victorian Alps, with the Mitta Mitta River forming at the confluence of the Cobungra River and the Big River, just south of Anglers Rest, flowing north, joined by twenty-four minor tributaries including the Dart River, before reaching its mouth with the Murray River, east of Albury at Lake Hume. The river descends 514 metres over its course of 204 kilometres; the Mitta Mitta River is the source of 40% of the Murray's flow. Along the Mitta Mitta River, mean annual flow can triple from Hinnomunjie in the south to Tallangatta in the north. Highest flows are attributable to the spring snow melt; the flow of the Mitta Mitta River is modified and impounded by Dartmouth Dam and Hume Dam, both major water reservoirs.
Upstream of Dartmouth Dam, the river flows swiftly through near-pristine forest. Below the dam, it travels more sedately through flatter, cleared farming country; the original junction of the Mitta Mitta River with the Murray River is now submerged beneath the waters of Lake Hume for a large part of the time. The catchment area of the Mitta Mitta River is estimated as 10,062 square kilometres; the river valley used to flood on a nearly annual basis, but the completion of Dartmouth Dam in the 1970s eliminated the floods. The river flows through a magnificent valley that contains four small towns: Mitta Mitta, Dartmouth. Mitta Mitta is a small hamlet at the confluence of the Snowy Creek. For the fisherman, the Mitta Mitta River is a good source for trout brown trout and the occasional rainbow trout; the Mitta Mitta River upstream of Hinnomunjie Bridge is a favourite for white water enthusiasts, with one licensed company operating commercial facilities. The river is frequented by recreational kayakers as a single or multi day trip with a grade between II and IV.
List of rivers of Victoria Media related to Mitta Mitta River at Wikimedia Commons "Mitta Mitta Basin". A guide to inland angling waters of Victoria. Department of Primary Industries. 15 April 2010
Macquarie Dictionary
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is held by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on Australian English, it pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. It was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, it is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office away from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district. The first seven editions of the Macquarie Dictionary were edited by lexicographer Susan Butler, who joined the project in 1970 as a research assistant, was its chief editor by the time the first edition was published in 1981. Butler announced her retirement as the Macquarie's editor in March 2018 after 48 years with the publisher.
The original version of the Macquarie Dictionary was based on Hamlyn's Encyclopedic World Dictionary of 1971, which in turn was based on Random House's American College Dictionary of 1947, based on the 1927 New Century Dictionary, based on The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, which itself was based on Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language second edition of 1841. Since its first publication in 1981, its use has grown so that over time, it has come to rival longer-established dictionaries from elsewhere in the English-speaking world as a standard authority on the English language within Australia; the second edition was published in 1991 and it introduced encyclopedic content to many entries. The third edition, published in 1997, made use of an inhouse corpus of Australian writing, Ozcorp, to add a large number of examples of Australian usage, to give some of the flavour of an historical dictionary; this edition gave a good coverage of English in Asia. The fourth edition, published in 2005, increases the number of citations, includes etymologies for many phrases and pays particular attention to Australian regionalisms.
The fifth edition was published on October 2009 and places particular emphasis on words relating to the environment and climate change. The sixth edition was published on October 2013 and includes an update of new words and senses as well as words and phrases from other varieties of English which impinge on Australian English such as British English, American English and English in Southeast Asia and India; the seventh edition of the Macquarie Dictionary was published on 28 February 2017. With a foreword by Kate Grenville, this latest edition includes thousands of new words and senses along with Australian regionalisms and a collection of words from the Australian experience in WW1; the dictionary records standard Australian English spelling, closer to British spelling than American spelling, with spellings like colour, centre and practice/practise. It gives -ise spellings first, listing -ize spellings as acceptable variants, unlike the Oxford English Dictionary and some other dictionaries of British English, which continue to prefer -ize to -ise in spite of the opposite tendency amongst the British general public.
Labour, however, is sometimes spelt labor in reference to the Australian political party. One difference from British usage is the word program which the Macquarie Dictionary gives as the preferred spelling. See main article on Word of the Year. A number of smaller versions are available, including a pocket edition, as well as companion volumes such as a thesaurus; the latest edition of the main complete version of the Macquarie Dictionary is the seventh, published in 2017. The Macquarie Australian Slang Dictionary published in 2004 is an up-to-date record of Australian slang. A range of dictionaries from the complete to a small dictionary is available as an iOS application; the Macquarie Dictionary Online was the digital version of the print fourth edition. From 2013 it is the most complete version of the dictionary with greatest coverage of encyclopedic and non-encyclopedic entries, it offers spoken pronunciations. It is available by subscription. Macquarie Dictionary Online
Electorates of the Australian states and territories
A State Electoral District is an electorate within the Lower House or Legislative Assembly of Australian states and territories. Most state electoral districts send a single member to a state or territory's parliament using the preferential method of voting; the area of a state electoral district is dependent upon the Electoral Acts in the various states and vary in area between them. At present, there are 409 state electoral districts in Australia. State electoral districts do not apply to the Upper House, or Legislative Council, in those states that have one. In New South Wales and South Australia, MLCs represent the entire state, in Tasmania they represent single-member districts, in Victoria and Western Australia they represent a region formed by grouping electoral districts together. There are five electorates for the Legislative Assembly, each with five members each, making up 25 members in total. There are 93 electoral districts in New South Wales. There are 25 single-member electoral divisions in the Northern Territory, 17 former divisions.
There are 93 electoral districts in Queensland, for the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. Information about the QLD electoral districts for the 2006 elections can be obtained from the Electoral Commission of Queensland website. There are 47 single-member electoral districts in South Australia, for the South Australian House of Assembly. There are 15 electoral divisions in Tasmania for the upper house Legislative Council. In the lower house the five federal divisions are used, but electing 5 members each There are 88 electoral districts in Victoria, for the Victorian Legislative Assembly. There are 59 single-member electoral districts in Western Australia for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. 42 are in the Perth metropolitan area and 17 are in the rest of the state. Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives Local government in Australia Parliaments of the Australian states and territories
