Landmarks in Australia

Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and
distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture.
Designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, but completed by an Australian architectural team, the building
was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973.
The building and its surrounds occupy the whole of Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, near the Royal
Botanic Gardens and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The building comprises multiple performance venues, which together host well over 1,500 performances
annually, attended by more than 1.2 million people. Performances are presented by numerous performing
artists, including three resident companies: Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney
Symphony Orchestra. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia, the site is visited by more
than eight million people annually, and approximately 350,000 visitors take a guided tour of the building
each year. The building is managed by the Sydney Opera House Trust, an agency of the New South Wales
State Government.
Sydney Harbour Bridge
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge spanning Sydney Harbour from the central
business district to the North Shore. The view of the bridge, the harbour, and the nearby Sydney Opera
House is widely regarded as an iconic image of Sydney, and of Australia itself. Nicknamed "The
Coathanger" because of its arch-based design, the bridge carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian
traffic.
The bridge was designed and built by British firm Dorman Long of Middlesbrough, and opened in 1932.
The bridge's general design was a rough copy of the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City. It was also
inspired by Tyne Bridge.
It is the tenth longest spanning-arch bridge in the world and the tallest steel arch bridge, measuring 134 m
from top to water level. It was also the world's widest long-span bridge, at 48.8 m wide, until
construction of the new Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver was completed in 2012.
Uluru
Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock is a large sandstone formation in the centre of Australia. It is in the southern
part of the Northern Territory, 335 km south-west of Alice Springs.
Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara, the Aboriginal people of the area, known as the Anangu. The area around
the formation is home to an abundance of springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings. Uluru is
listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Uluru and Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, are the two major
features of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
Uluru is one of Australia's most recognisable natural landmarks and has been a popular destination for tourists
since the late 1930s. It is also one of the most important indigenous sites in Australia.
Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and
900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres. The
reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel.
The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living
organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It
supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981. CNN labelled it one of the
Seven Natural Wonders of the World in 1997. Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007.
The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.
A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of
human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and its ecosystem include
runoff of manmade pollutants, climate crisis accompanied by mass coral bleaching, dumping of dredging
sludge and cyclic population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. According to a study published in
October 2012 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its
coral cover since 1985, a finding reaffirmed by a 2020 study which found over half of the reef's coral cover to
have been lost between 1995 and 2017, with the effects of a widespread 2020 bleaching event not yet
quantified.
The Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles are a collection of limestone stacks off the shore of Port Campbell National Park, by the
Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. The Twelve Apostles are located on the traditional lands of the
Eastern Maar peoples.
Their proximity to one another has made the site a popular tourist attraction. Eight of the original nine stacks
remain standing at the Twelve Apostles' viewpoint, after one collapsed in July 2005. Though the view from
the promontory by the Twelve Apostles never included twelve stacks, additional stacks—not considered part
of the Apostles group—are located to the west within the national park.