Publisher's Synopsis
In this second volume geographers address the problems of a society that has generated its own spatial forms over a long history of becoming absorbed into the world economic system as a staple producer of commodity exports. A special human geography has been created, adapted to historical contingencies and to the difficult land surface described in Volume 1. Currently the world economic system within which Australia grew to prosperity is faltering and changing, leading to special Australian problems presented in this book.;Chapters surveying population distribution, urban settlements, manufacturing, transport, mining and land use show special Australian adaptations to remoteness, aridity, and distance. Tropical Australia has its own problems treated separately, and there are problems of a multicultural society and the Aborigines which are given separate chapters. Australia's wider relations, as a regional power in the South Pacific and with the capitalist world of transnational companies, are given special treatment.;Human geography adds a sense of space to considerations of economy and society which is indispensable to any student of contemporary Australia. Crucial decisions about location, made in the past or the present, affect the life-chances of all Australians, so that this book can be seen as vital to all those who ask about the present and the future of a country that must undergo rapid change.
