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General reference resources

Atlapedia Online
http://www.atlapedia.com/
An excellent source of country maps (both physical and political) and other statistical, economic, political and social information about all the countries of the world.

Australasian Legal Information Institute
http://www.austlii.edu.au/
An essential searchable database of all Australian legislation, both Commonwealth and state/territory.

CIA World Factbook
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
This is the mother of all reference sources on countries of the world. You'll find that most other country references are, in fact, based on the information here. Although it has, of course, a US bias, it is still one of the best sources of information on just about anything you might want to know about a country.

Internet Scout Project
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
Internet Scout Weblog
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/weblog/
This is a wonderful website which records high quality Internet sites in a wide variety of disciplines. It is aimed at researchers and educators and sends out a weekly email newsletter with great websites and detailed annotations and comments. An absolute must for the serious Internet researcher. The Weblog is a more whimsical selection of sites which are not necessarily of high quality but nevertheless are interesting, quirky or otherwise noteworthy. It changes almost daily and only lists the last 15 or so sites found, so it is a good idea to visit regularly to make sure you catch the good ones!

National Library of Australia
Search the Internet
http://www.nla.gov.au/pathways/pthw_global.html
Australian Government information
http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/
The National Library provides an extensive listing of both general Internet resources and Australian Government services.

RefDesk.com
http://www.refdesk.com/
This site isn't being boastful when it claims to be the 'single best source for facts on the Net'. Use this portal to find everything from dictionaries, converters, news, facts, stats, etc.