New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Friday pieced together the roller-coaster ride experienced by Australian businesses during the global financial crisis that sunk much of its pangs on the local economy from late 2008 to the best part of 2009.

According to the fresh ABS data, which covered information from as early as June 2007, more than 500,000 thousand business establishments folded up in the two years that followed though the agency recorded a 73.6 percent survival rate for operators within the same period across the nation.

The ABS said that nationwide, business failings grew the whole time of the economic period from the 1.52 million posted in the first half of calendar 2007 to 2.07 million two years after, with 57,000 businesses in Western Australia alone closing in the same period where more than 10,000 from the numbers were start-up operations.

Business failures registered a creeping rate of 28.3 percent in the period, where in 2008 business operations plunged to 178,000 from the 211,000 recorded in the previous year and as the economy further spiralled downward, that number dwindled to 154,000 in 2009 for an overall survival rate of 73.1 percent.

Amidst the more than two years of downturn, it was the health care and social assistance which emerged as the best prepared to have contained the crisis with 81.2 percent survival rate and followed by 76.5 percent turned in by the mining industry.

Australia's public administration and safety sector appeared to have absorbed much of the brunt of the economic lashings as it only managed to keep a 65.3 percent of survival rate.

Also, the beatings unleashed by the global financial crisis took its toll on small businesses employing no more than 20 workers as their numbers tumbled to 24,931 across the whole of Australia during the entire period, with 80 percent of the failures occurring at the height of the contraction in 2008 to 2009.