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There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand.

Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.

Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution - warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain - are even more deadly here.

Australia lives with a strange contradiction - our national image of ourselves is one of the Outback, and yet nearly all us live in big cities. Move outside the coastal fringe, and Australia can feel like a foreign country.

It's got more cosmopolitan, and it's lost its uniqueness, but Australia is still a great place.

Australia is about as far away as you can get. I like that.

I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa.

Unlike New Zealand, which has nothing especially predatory, Australia is full of spiders and crocodiles and all kinds of animals that will eat you and sting you.

America has given me everything Australia couldn't. I grew up on a dairy farm. Now I live in Isleworth, a gated community in Orlando with Tiger Woods down the street.