How big is Australia
12-Jul-2010
Really? Australia is that big?
Over the years I am still amazed at how many
people around the world don’t understand the size of this country. Being asked
by Europeans if I could drive them from Melbourne to Brisbane for an afternoon
appointment (it’s about a 24 hour drive and only covers half of the east coast)
or pop over to Perth for a 1 hour meeting (a 5 hour flight one way) always makes
me laugh. See here for a comparison….
This again just shows the size of Australia compared to many, many other
countries of the world, despite our minuscule population (by the rest of the
world’s standards at least).
This was also highlighted by an article in the
Herald Sun Newspaper of July 29 2008, which had a chart of the current
population densities of the various states and Territories of Australia, which
just confirm this fact.
Despite our huge landmass, the average population
density for the whole of Australia is just 2.7 people per square Kilometre. The
Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which was created out of Farmland over a
hundred years ago, roughly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney for no other
reason than to be our Capital City and base of The Federal Government and public
servants (a great place to them I think), naturally holds the record out of the
8 individual states and Territories, with the impressive figure of 142.1 people
per square Kilometre. However when you leave this artificial Territory and get
to the real Australia, the next highest, is my own state of Victoria with only
22. 6 people per Square kilometre. From there, it drops to 8.5 for New South
Wales and 7.2 for Tasmania. The remaining 3 States and one Territory are all
below the national average with West Australia (0.8) and the Northern Territory
(0.2) both below one percent.
And for those Americans who are still
amazed that we don’t speak German in the Land Down Under, this may help the
confusion as they can now see the difference between Austria and Australia.
Another point of trivia, Australia has approximately the same land mass as the
USA excluding Alaska, and almost the same population and 20% of the economy of
California (but we aren’t quite close to bankruptcy…yet).
So a drive from Perth to Brisbane is about the same as San Francisco to Toronto!
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