Queensland

Northeastern Australia is home to the state of Queensland, which has the distinction of being both Australia's second-largest and third-most populated state. It shares its western, southwestern, and southern borders with the Northern Territory, the State of South Australia, and the State of New South Wales, respectively. In the state's eastern direction are the Coral Sea and the Pacific Ocean as natural boundaries. The Torres Strait is located to the north of it and it is the body of water that divides the Australian mainland from Papua New Guinea. The state of Queensland is the sixth-largest sub-national entity in the world and is bigger than all but 15 nations thanks to its size of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 square miles). Because of its size, Queensland has a diverse range of geographical features and climates, including tropical rainforests, rivers, coral reefs, mountain ranges, and sandy beaches in its tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions, as well as deserts and savanna in the semi-arid and desert climatic regions of its interior. Savanna is a type of grassland that can be found in semi-arid and desert climates.

There are more than 5.2 million people living in Queensland, with the majority of them living around the coast and, in particular, in South East Queensland. Brisbane, the third-largest city in Australia, serves as both the state's capital and its most populous metropolis. Queensland is home to ten of Australia's thirty most populous cities, with the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Townsville, Cairns, and Toowoomba being the biggest outside of Brisbane. Other significant cities in the state include Ipswich and Toowoomba. The diversity of the state's population is reflected in the fact that 28.9% of its residents are immigrants.

Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were the first people to settle in what is now the state of Queensland. Willem Janszoon, a Dutch navigator, is credited with being the first European to set foot on Australian soil. In 1606, he explored the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula. James Cook staked a claim for the Kingdom of Great Britain along the eastern coast of Australia in the year 1770. Arthur Phillip established the colony of New South Wales in 1788. At that time, the colony comprised all of what is now the state of Queensland. In the next decades, exploration efforts were directed toward Queensland, and in 1824, John Oxley founded the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement in the city of Brisbane. On June 6, 1859, Queensland broke away from New South Wales, which is today celebrated as Queensland Day. This event led to the establishment of Queensland as a self-governing Crown colony with responsible government, and it was named after Queen Victoria in honour of her. At the time of Australia's federation on January 1, 1901, Queensland was one of the six colonies that transitioned into the nation's foundation states. Since the Bjelke-Petersen administration in the late 20th century, Queensland has been the recipient of a high degree of internal migration from the other states and territories of Australia. Furthermore, Queensland continues to be a popular destination for people moving from one state to another.

Among the states that make up Australia, Queensland has the third-largest economy, and its most prosperous industries include mining, agriculture, transportation, international education, international banking, and insurance. Tourism plays a significant role in the economy of the state of Queensland, popularly known as the Sunshine State, due to the state's abundance of beaches, tropical and subtropical temperatures, and the Great Barrier Reef.