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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2012
At the Second World Congress on Emergency and Disaster Medicine there were many presentations of drama and disaster from all over the world. This article is unusual in that no major disasters are discussed.
Australia is a huge island continent with many of its cities separated by over 3000 kilometres. The dense settlement is in the southeast, but the greatest disaster potential is in the sparsely populated northwest.
This country is fortunate to have been spared from calamities during the documented history of the 200 years of European settlement. Previous Aboriginal history is sketchy, due to the absence of a written language. A history of the disasters includes earthquakes, cyclone, floods and bushfires. There are no volcanoes in Australia. Earthquake fault lines do exist, but there have been no incidents accompanied by great loss of life and property. Cyclones are frequent, but they usually wear themselves out on sparsely populated northern coastlines.