  The Minerva-Australis telescope array is a facility dedicated to the
follow-up, confirmation, characterisation, and mass measurement of bright
transiting planets discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
(TESS) -- a category in which it is almost unique in the southern hemisphere.
It is located at the University of Southern Queensland's Mount Kent Observatory
near Toowoomba, Australia. Its flexible design enables multiple 0.7m robotic
telescopes to be used both in combination, and independently, for
high-resolution spectroscopy and precision photometry of TESS transit planet
candidates. Minerva-Australis also enables complementary studies of exoplanet
spin-orbit alignments via Doppler observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin
effect, radial velocity searches for non-transiting planets, planet searches
using transit timing variations, and ephemeris refinement for TESS planets. In
this first paper, we describe the design, photometric instrumentation,
software, and science goals of Minerva-Australis, and note key differences from
its Northern hemisphere counterpart -- the Minerva array. We use recent transit
observations of four planets--WASP-2b, WASP-44b, WASP-45b, and HD 189733b to
demonstrate the photometric capabilities of Minerva-Australis.
