Consider the following statements with regard to Australia: 1. The Coral Sea separates the Great Barrier Reef from the South Pacific. 2. The Great Dividing Range extends from Melbourne to Perth in Australia. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — A, 1 only. Take statement 2 first, because it settles half the question at once. The Great Dividing Range runs down Australia's eastern side, from Dauan Island in the Torres Strait off Cape York, the whole length of the Queensland and New South Wales coast, then west across Victoria until it dies out in the Wimmera plains beyond the Grampians. Melbourne sits at its southern end; Perth is roughly 2,700 kilometres away on the opposite side of the continent, with the Nullarbor Plain and the western deserts in between. The range never approaches it, so statement 2 is plainly false. Statement 1 stands on the ordinary reading of the map. The Great Barrier Reef lies along the western edge of the Coral Sea, hard against the Queensland coast; the Coral Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific and merges with the open Pacific in the east. Travel east from the reef and it is Coral Sea water you cross before you are in the South Pacific proper — which is what the statement asserts.

• (b)2 only — Statement 2 is the clearly false half. The Great Dividing Range is an eastern feature that fades out in western Victoria; Perth lies in Western Australia, on the other side of the continent.
• (c)Both 1 and 2 — Fails on statement 2 alone. No mountain system links Melbourne to Perth — the Nullarbor Plain and the western deserts lie between them.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Too harsh on statement 1. The Coral Sea genuinely occupies the water between the Great Barrier Reef and the open South Pacific, even though the phrasing glosses over the fact that the Coral Sea is itself part of the South Pacific and the reef lies inside it.

Australia's relief is simple in outline: a low western plateau of ancient rock, the vast central lowlands with the Great Artesian Basin beneath them, and the eastern highlands. The eastern highlands are the Great Dividing Range, which separates the short, fast rivers flowing east to the Pacific from the long westward-draining systems such as the Murray and the Darling. Offshore from Queensland lies the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef system, about 2,000 kilometres long, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1981 and lying within the Coral Sea.

The productive habit for a two-statement item like this is to look for the statement that can be falsified outright rather than to weigh both equally. Statement 2 names two cities, and the moment you place Melbourne in Victoria and Perth in Western Australia the claim collapses. That reduces the answer to (a) or (d) and turns the whole item on how charitably statement 1 is read. Read it as a claim about relative position and it is true — reef, then Coral Sea, then open Pacific. Read it as a claim that the reef is outside the South Pacific and it would be wrong, since the Coral Sea is a marginal sea of that ocean. Examiners rarely intend the pedantic reading, and here the alternative would require calling statement 1 false, which the map does not support.

• The Great Dividing Range stretches more than 3,500 km from Dauan Island in the Torres Strait, through Queensland and New South Wales, then west across Victoria to fade out in the Wimmera plains.
• It passes through Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory — never Western Australia.
• The Coral Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific off Australia's north-east coast, bounded in the west by the coast of Queensland and in the east by Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
• The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef system, extends about 2,000 km along that north-eastern coast and lies within the Coral Sea; UNESCO listed it in 1981.
• The Coral Sea merges with the Tasman Sea to the south, the Solomon Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the east.

• Extending the Great Dividing Range across the continent; it is an eastern range that ends in western Victoria.
• Assuming the Coral Sea and the South Pacific are alternatives; the Coral Sea is a marginal sea of the South Pacific.
• Placing the Great Barrier Reef off Western Australia — the reef lies off Queensland, in the north-east.

As a two-statement item combining one plausible-sounding water-body claim with one falsifiable claim about the extent of a mountain range, or as a single-answer question on where the world's largest reef system lies.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Great Dividing Range of Australia runs mainly through which one of the following groups of states and territories?

  • (a)Western Australia and South Australia
  • (b)Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria
  • (c)Northern Territory and Western Australia
  • (d)Tasmania and South Australia

  Answer(b) Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria — the range follows the eastern coastline and fades out in western Victoria.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Great Barrier Reef lies within which one of the following seas?

  • (a)Tasman Sea
  • (b)Arafura Sea
  • (c)Coral Sea
  • (d)Timor Sea

  Answer(c) Coral Sea — the reef runs along the sea's western boundary, off the coast of Queensland.