Travel And Tourism

 Located along Australia’s southern coast in the Victoria province, Melbourne mixes urban sophistication with a mellow beachy vibe. According to Frommer’s, who ranks Melbourne as one of its top 10 destinations of 2010, “Melbourne’s sublime appeal lies in its laid-back attitude, its distinctive cosmopolitan flavor and a rich calendar of events.” This was enough for us to carry this relaxed city down-under over into 2011. Visit Melbourne for its easygoing coffeehouses, fine food and wine, turquoise waters and eclectic neighborhoods. Here we have some of new and recent Photos of Melbourne, Australia given below.

The world's first coral reefs occurred about 500 million years ago, and the first closeAerial Picture of a coral reef relatives of modern corals developed in southern Europe about 230 million years ago. By comparison, the Great Barrier Reef is relatively young at just 500,000 years old. The current reef's structure is much younger at less than around 8,000 years old.

Most modern reefs have formed on hard surfaces in the ocean, such as a base of an old reef that died during a period when sea level was lower, or the edge of a rocky island. Depending on how they start out, several types of reefs can form. Some coral reefs form in the deep ocean and are called atolls. The theories on how coral reefs form were first put forward by Charles Darwin (of The Origin of Species fame) who proposed that atolls form around the edges of high volcanic islands that gradually submerge beneath the sea with changes in sea level or subsidence of the land. Thus an atoll starts life as a fringing reef, then becomes more of a ring growing on the shrinking land-mass, until the land disappears and just the coral circle remains. In some cases, the coral growth is unable to keep pace with the sinking island, and sunken dead reefs have been found.