Kangaroo
A female kangaroo carries her tiny newborn joey in a pouch on her belly for up to eight months while it grows strong enough to hop on its own.
Flag of Australia
Field Report
Australia is a vast island continent in the Southern Hemisphere, surrounded by the Indian and Pacific Oceans and located southeast of Asia. It is the sixth-largest country in the world by land area, yet most of its interior is a dry, flat desert called the Outback, so nearly all of its twenty-six million people live along the coasts. Australia has some of the most unique wildlife found anywhere on Earth, and it is home to Aboriginal peoples whose ancestors have called this land home for tens of thousands of years.
From the Field Notebook
Kangaroo
A female kangaroo carries her tiny newborn joey in a pouch on her belly for up to eight months while it grows strong enough to hop on its own.
Platypus
The platypus is one of the only mammals in the world that lays eggs, and the male has a venomous spur on its hind leg that can cause serious pain.
Koala
Koalas sleep up to twenty-two hours a day because the eucalyptus leaves they eat are so low in nutrition that resting is the only way they can conserve enough energy to survive.
Vegemite on Toast
Vegemite is a thick, very dark, salty yeast spread that Australians grow up eating on buttered toast, though most visitors find the strong bitter taste quite surprising at first.
Meat Pie
A hand-held pastry shell filled with minced beef and gravy, the meat pie is a beloved everyday lunch eaten at bakeries, sports grounds, and petrol stations all across the country.
Tim Tam
Tim Tams are chocolate biscuit sandwiches coated in a chocolate shell, and Australians have a tradition of biting off both ends and sipping hot tea through the biscuit like a straw before it melts.
Australia is the only country in the world that takes up an entire continent all by itself.
The Great Barrier Reef, located off Australia's northeast coast, is the largest living structure on Earth and can even be seen from space.
Australia is home to more species of venomous snakes than any other country on the planet — around one hundred of its land snake species are venomous.
The city of Alice Springs sits almost exactly in the geographic center of Australia, more than a thousand miles from the nearest ocean coastline.
Aboriginal Australians have lived on the continent for at least sixty-five thousand years, making their culture one of the oldest continuous cultures ever recorded in human history.
Daily Life
83
Years life expectancy
96%
Kids go to school
Missions Field Report
Australia is home to 208 distinct people groups — 41 of them haven’t yet heard about Jesus.
A majority of Australia's people follow Christianity (62.2%). Evangelical Christians make up about 13.7% of the population.
What People Believe
Unreached People Groups
These are communities of people who haven’t had the chance to hear about Jesus yet. They need missionaries — and they need kids like you to pray for them.
Malay
185,000 people
Punjabi
141,000 people
Nepali, general
138,000 people
Punjabi, Western
138,000 people
Jewish, English-speaking
123,000 people
Prayer Journal
Tick each one as you pray. God hears every word.