Country Guide

Southeastern Australia

Including the southeastern corner of Queensland (Brisbane), Victoria (Melbourne), and the greater part of New South Wales (Sydney, Bourke, Canberra), but excluding the drier western and northwestern part of this state.

For other Australian regions click here

This part of Australia has attracted the most extensive colonization by Europeans since the first settlement near Sydney in the late 18th century. It has a climate that is best described as warm-temperate with no real cold season, warm-to-hot summers, and rain well distributed throughout the year.

The weather can be changeable at all times of the year and summers are liable to prolonged heat waves and droughts. The hazard of drought is much greater inland as the average rainfall decreases; prolonged drought and unreliable rainfall have been persistent themes in the settlement history of Australia.

Cold spells are brief and never severe on the coast, as the tables for Sydney and Melbourne show. Temperatures can drop much lower inland (see the tables for Canberra and Bourke). The temperatures for Canberra also illustrate the effect of a moderate altitude in lowering the winter minimum temperatures.

The low annual rainfall at Bourke illustrates the transition to the semi-arid conditions of the interior. It should be noted that the extreme maximum temperatures at Bourke are higher than those recorded in the tropical regions of the north and that both Sydney and Melbourne occasionally record temperatures well above 100°F/38°C.

Latitude here begins to affect the number of sunshine hours. Summer sunshine averages eight to nine hours a day in summer but only five to six in winter. In Melbourne, which gets more cloud and disturbed weather despite a lower rainfall, sunshine hours per day in winter are only three to four as against seven to eight in summer.

Click on the links below for a detailed look at Australia's regions:

Australia
Tropical North and Northeast
Southeastern Australia
Southern and Southwestern Australia
Interior and Semi-desert Areas
Tasmania