A China theme park in Australia featuring a full-size replica of gates to the Forbidden City and a nine-storey temple could rival the Sydney Opera House as a tourist drawcard, officials said Monday.

The planned Aus$500 million (U.S.$520 million) attraction moved a step closer after Wyong Shire Council in New South Wales signed a deal on Sunday to sell 15.7 hectares of land to the company behind the proposal.

Australia has unveiled a new radio telescope in the remote outback that will give the world a vastly improved view of the sun and much faster warnings on massive solar storms.

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope will detect flares on the sun's surface that could damage communication satellites, electricity power grids and GPS navigation systems, director Steven Tingay said Saturday.

All cigarettes sold in Australia will be in identical, plain packages from Saturday in a world first after the government overcame legal challenges from the tobacco industry.

Under new laws which come into effect on December 1, all tobacco products must be sold in drab, olive-brown packets with expanded graphic health warnings which feature images such as gangrenous feet and mouth cancer.

A huge red algal bloom along vast stretches of southeastern Australia's coastline Thursday resulted in beaches being closed and turned swathes of usually pristine ocean milky pink.

The algae, noctiluca scintillans, forced the closure of Sydney's Bondi beach and a number of neighboring inlets earlier this week, and government officials said it had now spread along the fringes of two states.

Qantas Airways on Wednesday severed a lucrative marketing deal with Tourism Australia after claiming its boss was leading a consortium trying to unseat the airline's management and buy out the company.

The carrier said it had advised the country's official tourism agency it was halting the Aus$50 million (U.S.$52 million) deal "due to a potential conflict of interest of the agency's chairman", former Qantas chief Geoff Dixon.

Mexican tequila makers celebrated on Wednesday Australia's decision to recognize Mexico as the only place in the world that can use the drink's name.

The Tequila Regulatory Council of Mexico said that Australia joined Russia and Thailand in giving Mexico the protected designation of origin for the drink, which is made from the blue agave plant found in Jalisco state.

A South Pacific island identified on Google Earth and world maps does not exist, according to Australian scientists who went searching for the mystery landmass during a geological expedition.

The sizeable phantom island in the Coral Sea is shown as Sandy Island on Google Earth and Google maps and is supposedly midway between Australia and the French-governed New Caledonia.

Australia Friday created the world's largest network of marine reserves, protecting a huge swathe of ocean environment despite claims it will devastate the fishing industry.

The announcement, after years of planning and consultation, will significantly expand the protection of creatures such as the blue whale, green turtle, critically endangered populations of grey nurse sharks, and dugongs.

The United States military will station a powerful radar and a space telescope in Australia as part of its strategic shift towards Asia, the two countries announced Wednesday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the deal as a "major leap forward in bilateral space cooperation and an important new frontier in the United States' rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region".

From boats bobbing on the Great Barrier Reef, to hot air balloons hovering over the rainforest, and the hilltops and beaches in between, tens of thousands of scientists, tourists and amateur astronomers watched as the sun, moon and Earth aligned and plunged northern Australia into darkness during a total solar eclipse Wednesday.

Stubborn clouds that many feared would ruin the view parted — somewhat — in north Queensland, defying forecasts of a total eclipse-viewing bust and relieving spectators who had fanned out to glimpse the celestial phenomenon.