Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern corner of the mainland continent.

It is neighboured by the Northern Territory to the west, South Australia to the south-west and New South Wales to the south. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. The state is Australia's second largest by area, following Western Australia, and the country's third most populous after New South Wales and Victoria.

The area was first colonised by Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, who arrived between 40 000 and 65 000 years ago, according to various dating methods. Later, Queensland was made a British Crown Colony that was separated from New South Wales on 6 June 1859, a date now celebrated annually as Queensland Day. The area that currently forms Brisbane was originally the Moreton Bay penal colony, intended as a place for recidivist convicts who had offended while serving out their sentences in New South Wales. The state later encouraged free settlement, and today Queensland's economy is dominated by the agricultural, tourist and natural resource sectors.

The population is concentrated in the south-east corner, which includes the capital Brisbane, Logan City, Ipswich, Toowoomba, and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. Other major regional centres include Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg, and Mount Isa. Queensland is often nicknamed the Sunshine State, since it enjoys warm weather and a sizable portion of the state is in the tropics.

Geography

The state's borders are defined as:
North The northernmost part of the state is the triangular Cape York Peninsula, which points toward New Guinea. The western side of the peninsula is washed by the Gulf of Carpentaria, while its eastern side borders the Coral Sea, an arm of the Pacific Ocean.
East The eastern border is the Pacific Ocean
West To the west, Queensland is bordered by the Northern Territory, at the 138° E. longitude, and to the south-west by the north-eastern corner of South Australia.
South by New South Wales. This border has three sections:
The watershed from Point Danger to the Dumaresq River
The river section involving the Dumaresq, the MacIntyre and the Barwon
The 29° S. latitude, over to the South Australian border.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Queensland"

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