Australia is bigger than some people overseas imagine.
So here’s a quick comparison of Australian states to their US counterparts.
Tasmania is Australia’s smallest state, with a total area of 68,401 square kilometres.
That’s bigger than West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, or Rhode Island.
Australia’s second smallest state is Victoria, at 227, 444km2.
It’s larger than Minnesota, Utah, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Washington, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri, Wisconsin, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maine, Florida, or Pennsylvania.
Fun fact: Victoria is larger in area than Indiana and South Carolina combined.
Now on to the ones that might surprise you.
You know how Texans love talking up how big Texas is?
New South Wales is bigger than Texas.
And by quite a margin. NSW is 801, 150 sq km compared to 696,241 sq km for Texas.
South Australia is bigger than Texas, and Michigan. Combined.
SA is 984, 321 sq km.
Texas (696,241 km2) plus Michigan (250,493 sq km) is just 946, 734 sq km.
Queensland is bigger than Alaska.
Queensland is 1,729,742 sq km, compared to 1,717,854 sq km for Alaska.
That also means Queensland is bigger than Texas and California. Combined.
Texas (696,241 km2) plus California (423,968 km2) is 1,120,209 sq km.
You can add in Michigan too (250,493 sq km) and it’s still only 1,370,702 sq km.
That’s right kids. Texas, California, and Michigan combined are 359,040 sq km smaller than Queensland.
That leaves Western Australia. It’s 2,527,013 square kilometres.
How big is that? Well, the combined area of Texas and Alaska is 2,414,095 sq km, so pretty bloody big.
Wait you’re telling me that some arbitrarily designed geographical regions are bigger than some others?
Fun fact: the canton of El Chaco in Ecuador is larger than the county of Rutland in the UK
@drolex I’m telling you some arbitrarily designated regions are far larger than most people imagine them to be.
Put a much more simple and meaningful way rather than subdivisions: Australia is only about 5% smaller than the contiguous US (“lower 48”).
“I thought it was bigger”. Yeah maybe it’s not only about size, maybe it’s about how much fossil fuel is hidden underground
@ajsadauskas @australia When I worked in The Rocks in Sydney an American tourist asked what the “big birds” in the evening were, he nearly fainted when I told him they were bats…
Anyway we got chatting and he said we was going to drive up the east coast to Cairns. Great idea I said, give yourself a week or two to visit all the interesting stuff.
He blanched and said he expected to do it in three days…
I blame the Mercator projection…
@pandanus @ajsadauskas @australia I misread and first thought they meant fly up drive around and while I to my shame haven’t got to FNQ I thought, doing the reef one and and the rainforest the next would not do either justice.
Then I re-read and well, yikes you would not want to do that to yourself (or the other road users for that matter).
Folks do the same to NZ, long and thin is not small, for what it is worth. Our roads don’t forgive that most sadly.
@pandanus @ajsadauskas @australia my cousin is visiting for the first time. we have two weeks in australia. we’re meeting in sydney and then flying to melbourne and it was harder than expected to get him to understand just how much time it would take to fit uluru into our plans (we aren’t going).
I mean, Uluru is the definition of “middle of fucking nowhere”…
We would be happy to give you Texas if you are interested.
I live in Texas. If you gave this place to Australia, I’d find myself in a strange environment with no guns, no death penalty, rampant addictive gambling, beautifully rendered plastic currency, and women in possession of an accent that would enchant me by merely reciting the numbers in an old telephone book.
The only reason I’m not all in on this idea is that I fear the constant headaches from always being upside down.
Dropbears, don’t forget the dropbears
We have guns, just regulated guns
Look, if I can’t just pick one up from the vending machine when I retrieve my child from daycare, it just isn’t the same.
Why would you leave your child at daycare without their own gun? I’m calling CPS.
Absolutely not, stay away from us with that thing
@CompostMaterial Would you be willing to swap it for northern Queensland?
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Alaska is bigger than everyone everywhere, even Alaskans, imagine
@halferect @ajsadauskas yet simultaneously a lot smaller than it looks in Mercator
Lol if you drag the China country to the South Pole it glitches and then covers the rest of the world minus Antarctica. 😊
Huh, suppose that explains china opening a new antartic research station
@ajsadauskas @australia unless you’re from canada. :)
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@ajsadauskas @australia Texans like to think that Houston is a big city. Population is around 2-3 million. Maybe 7-8 million if you include the metro area. Which goes on forever.
Sydney is 5.3 million and Melbourne about 5.1 million.
Big? Yes. But not so big.
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@msdropbear42 @ajsadauskas I love a lot of US geography, but it is nearly 10 years since I have visited their amazing national parks.
The people, politics, parochialism, proselytising, patriotism, parks (car), and packing (of firearms) probably means that I won’t visit any time soon.
Their society needs a lot more repair than ours before I will feel comfortable visiting again.
@BernardSheppard @msdropbear42 @ajsadauskas Much of US geography and politics is derived from our history of colonialism (colonized in 1492-1620-1664-1776 ; colonizer in 1848-1898) and slavery and Jim Crow (essentially all years). And derivative of that, our other peculiar institution, is our federalism where the same territory is controlled by two (sometimes three) governments.
In many ways, our history is sadly similar, just without the same overt level of slavery (but blackbirding was slavery in all but name), with the colonisation compressed into a shorter time frame and without one of the religious persecution foundations of the colony that does seem to have been preserved in your culture to this day.
P. S. When I see your handle, mentally I reply Nachtmusik. It does show how much conditioning plays in our responses.
P. P. S. We too have three levels of government, and associated taxes. Luckily, however, we have, so far, escaped from the worst excesses of your version of that that I have seen which includes things like a stadium tax applied to car rentals (Houston, I think) which really was just a local government sponsored kickback for the stadium developer paid for by out of town visitors.
@ajsadauskas @australia The United States 🇺🇸 is slightly larger than Australia 🇦🇺 which is 🤯! Flat maps hide how large Australia 🇦🇺 is, but a globe is enlightening.
👉🏾 https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/australia/united-states
And to think it has a population smaller than California (20mil)
26.5 mil thank you very much
If by slightly you mean nearly 20%, I believe that’s only because of Alaska, then it would be smaller. The real crazy huge one is modern day Russia which is easily double Australia and almost 80% larger than the United States.
@skydivekingair @darnell The mainland of Australia is 7,591,608 square kilometres.
Add Tasmania and various offshore territories, and that rises to 7,688,287 sq km.
The land area of the contiguous US (so excluding Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.) Is 7,663,941.7 km.
Add them in, and you get 9,147,420 sq km.
So comparing like for like (mainland to the contiguous 48 states), Australia is slightly smaller.
The only way you get to “Australia is slightly larger” is if you include non-contiguous and island states for Australia (Tasmania), but not the US (Alaska and Hawaii).
But that is an apples-and-oranges comparison.
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@PP_BOY_ Who’s the bot?
The other fun one is that the continental US (AKA everything except Alaska) is just about the same size as Australia. Then when you consider that there’s 49 states versus Australia’s 7, you can see how the numbers come about.
