Australia is a Cuban village and consejo popular ("people's council", i.e. hamlet) of the municipality of Jagüey Grande, Matanzas Province.
[1] The village, founded in 1862, is in a sugar growing area and "dominated by the old, out-of-service sugar factory's chimney, with "Australia" written prominently down its length.
[citation needed] The village was the first sugar town in Cuba to stop using slave labour,[3] and served as Fidel Castro's base of operations during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
[2] Located 2 km south of Jagüey Grande, Australia lies next to Zapata Swamp (Ciénaga de Zapata).
It is served by the A1 motorway (linking Havana to Santa Clara) at the exit of Jagüey.