NATURAL DISASTERS : Earthquakes & Volcanoes: Home

Australia experiences a range of 'natural disasters' including bushfires, floods, severe storms, earthquakes and landslides. These events cause great financial hardship for individuals and communities, and can result in loss of life.

The experience of natural disaster has come to be seen as part of the Australian national character as described in the poem 'My Country' by Dorothea McKellar (1904).

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!

                                                                (Source: www.australia.gov.au, 2013)