How do the physical features of Australia make it unique? Compare the unique physical features of Australia to the unique physical features of Southeast Asia.

Australia is a state in the southern hemisphere that covers much of Oceania. Its neighboring countries are New Zealand in the southeast and Indonesia, East Java and Papua New Guinea in the north.

Three major landscapes can be geographically distinguished: the eastern, the middle and the western major landscape.

The western landscape takes up about 60 percent of the Australian landmass. There are the large arid regions of the Great Sand Desert, the Small Sand Desert, the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert and the Nullarbor Desert. Smaller mountains like the MacDonnell Ranges and island mountains like the Uluṟu are available in large numbers.

To the east is the central large landscape, the sediment basin of the Central Australian depression or the central lowland. The Simpson Desert is home to both the driest region in the country and the largest river system, the Murray-Darling Basin. In the middle large landscape there are both periodically drying fresh water lakes and salt lakes.

Since both the western and the central large landscape are largely uninhabitable, the majority of the Australian population lives in the eastern large landscape. This large eastern landscape includes the transitions from the mountains down to the coastal landscape. Coral reefs form the coast of the state of Queensland, which together form the Great Barrier Reef. The mountains that characterize this part of the country are the ridges of the Great Dividing Range, which extends from north to south for 3200 km.