Australia is a big country. So the advent of air travel was extremely important in the development of the country and in the way people interacted.
Let’s put it into some perspective: before air travel it would have taken days to travel between the capital cities of Australia. Now Sydney to Brisbane or Melbourne is just a one hour hop on a low-cost airline. Today Australia has some of the cheapest air travel in the world. Even though there are 3,000 km from one side of the continent to the other the cost per kilometer is very reasonable. Much of that is due to the introduction of low-cost carriers like Virgin, Jetstar and Tiger. Australian airports are mostly very busy and modern. Sydney airport is strikingly close to the city centre and when you are on the runway you can easily see the city centre skyscrapers. Melbourne’s main airport at Tullamarine is further out of the city at about 30 minutes by car. Melbourne also has a second airport at Avalon which is about one hour out of the city and serves both the city and also the Geelong and western Victoria.