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Modern Business Geography

The character of primary production in Australia. Among the primary
 products of Australia, metals are important because Australia is
a dry country with many rugged regions, which an energetic people
is rapidly exploiting. Wool is important for the same reasons and
because Australia still has enormous areas which are not yet thickly
settled.

39. From Table V make a list of the commodities whose production in Australia
 is at least as great as Australia’s percentage of the world’s population
 ; that is, 0.4 per cent of the world’s total.
How far does this list indicate that Australia supplies its own needs for
primary products? What kinds of products are most conspicuously
lacking? Does Australia supply anything that can easily take their
place?

The exports of Australia. So far as the rest of the world is concerned,
the important products of Australia are those that are produced to
the extent of more than two per cent of the world’s total.
11. Make a list of such products, divided into foods, fibers, metals, fuels, and
other raw materials. Which group is the most numerous and most important,
 as indicated by the percentages?
12. How does this list compare with the similar list for Asia?
13. What do these products suggest as to the main occupations in Australia
and New Zealand. compared with Asia?

The great activity of Australia. Remember that Australia and New
Zealand together have only as many people as Illinois; that is, they
have only one person where Asia has more than a hundred. Their
foreign commerce is normally about a fourth as much as that of
Asia.

14. Considering these facts, how does Australia compare with Asia in (a)
mileage of railroads (page 317); (b) number of great cities (page 330):
(¢) foreign commerce ?
Observe the location of cities in Australia and tell where you would expect
 to find the railway net closest.
46. On an outline map of Australia insert the cities of more than 200,000
people.
17. Find out something about each city. What does each export

Australia and New Zealand are progressing in manufacturing much
faster than any part of Asia, unless it be Japan.
18. Will the progress in manufacturing tend to increase or decrease the
importance of Asia as a source of raw materials for the United States?