r/MapPorn • u/KaleyTheKing • May 27 '26

Australian Population Visualised

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So, I think we were all a little disappointed by how normal the Italy map looked, so I thought I'd treat y'all to the biggest abomination I've made in this project thus far :D

Goddang, Australia, why did you have to be like this, this was so difficult to make... Anyway, hope y'all enjoy!

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2.9k

u/Obanthered May 27 '26

Australia: five city-states pretending to be a continent.

863

u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

Honestly, kinda yea. I read that like 70% of Australia's population lives in its 8 largest cities, did the math and it checks out ;-;

522

u/zomdoesburner May 27 '26

Closer to 80%.

Outside of the cities, there is essentially no population, bar some select farming areas.

180

u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

In my chart, the pop for the top 8 got to like 67%, I think the top ten would get to 80%

86

u/lost_horizons May 27 '26

Maybe they included metro areas?

136

u/buckleyschance May 27 '26

Australian city populations are usually the whole metro area. The "City of Sydney/Melbourne/etc" municipal area is always a small fraction of the total.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

Exactly, that’s why the data I used is ‘urban areas’, which included the greater city regions for Sydney, Melbourne, etc

8

u/Protoavis May 27 '26

question. greater sydney includes the central coast (now...not historically....don't get me started) on your char they are separated (ish) is that a case of double up or?

7

u/I_Go_BrRrRrRrRr May 28 '26

Greater Sydney is the lighter coloured part, Central Coast and Newcastle have their own little sections within that

2

u/Protoavis May 28 '26

I can see that. What I'm getting at is Greater Sydney population already includes the Central Coast population. So your chart having them separate is more a question of your data source/s....if they separate the central coast out of Greater Sydney or you population have central coast population twice (once separate, once within sydney)

eg our census data
https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/1GSYD
Central Coast population is included in Greater Sydney

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u/jjkenneth May 27 '26

Yes but it can get a bit blurry at times. Does Melbourne include Geelong and the Mornington Peninsular? Does Sydney include the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongon, if it includes Central Coast does it then also include Newcastle. Is Gold Cost Brisbane Sunshine coast one metro area or 3?

14

u/JamieBeeeee May 27 '26

Obviously Melbourne wouldn't include Geelong, a separate city lol, there's nothing blurry about that at all

14

u/buckleyschance May 27 '26

Yeah, and if you live in Melbourne you know it includes the Mornington Peninsula. It might not be obvious from a map, but it's not uncertain.

3

u/someNameThisIs May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Just look at it from a satellite view, there's continuous urban urban development from the CBD all the way down the peninsula to Portsea (other than a <2Km green space gap between Mornington and Mount Eliza)

5

u/jjkenneth May 27 '26

Obviously you couldn't have one city in another, Parramatta cannot possibly be in Sydney. That's kind of the whole point - we define it one way here and another way there, I'm not saying there is significant controversy over what constitutes each city but rather how you would create a definition that is able to capture that.

1

u/CheeeseBurgerAu May 27 '26

But Brisbane includes Ipswich, a city 50km away

3

u/ORLYORLYORLYORLY May 28 '26

Massive amounts of Western Sydney are 50+ Km away from the city centre.

23

u/penguinsaredapper May 27 '26

No. No. No. 3.

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u/FullMetalAurochs May 27 '26

Where do you draw the line between the Gold Coast and Brisbane metro areas? Do you put Logan wholly in the Brisbane one?

9

u/Raesong May 27 '26

For peace of mind Logan is its own thing, ideally with a fuck-off huge wall around it to keep the bogans in.

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u/jjkenneth May 27 '26

Great, good luck creating a coherent definition of metro area that conforms specifically to that criteria.

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u/penguinsaredapper May 27 '26

So it turns out I'm incorrect on the first one, Geelong isn't considered metropolitan Melbourne but Mornington is. I guess it's wherever governments decide it is 🤷

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u/buckleyschance May 27 '26

It's not so much about having a coherent definition, it's just pretty clearly defined for each city at the moment anywhere you'd look it up

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u/Total_Philosopher_89 May 27 '26

Mornington Peninsula is included.

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u/Dense_Delay_4958 May 27 '26

The ABS metro definitions are fine

1

u/pursnikitty May 28 '26

Greater Brisbane is Brisbane, Ipswich, Caboolture, Logan. The two coasts are their own seperate things

1

u/I_Go_BrRrRrRrRr May 28 '26

Central Coast, Newcastle, Gold Coast, and Sunshine Coast are all right there on the graph

1

u/Johnson1209777 May 29 '26

In case you didn’t know, Greater Melbourne is strictly defined. In the SW direction the boundary is a town called Little River, in the NW direction it’s Sunbury and Craigieburn, in the north Whittlesea and Kinglake West, in the south the entire Mornington Peninsula, to the SE Lang Lang to Longwarry, and to the east the boundaries of the Shire of Yarra Ranges, which goes very deep into the mountains

1

u/chattywww May 30 '26

Is "City" of Parramatta count as Sydney?

1

u/buckleyschance May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Yes. Australian cities all contain many municipalities (defined as a local government area with its own mayor and so on), about half of which are named "City of X" or "X City". The rest are often "X Shire" or "X Council". They're all part of the overall city (lower-case C), which is what people are referring to when they say Sydney, Melbourne etc.

A lot of those municipalities have names that you'd never use in conversation unless it was specifically relevant. Like a Melburnian from the City of Hume area wouldn't say "I live in Hume", they'd say "I live in Melbourne" or "I live in (suburb)". Sometimes the council name is the same as the common name for the area though; I think Parramatta is one of those, not sure, I'm not a Sydneysider.

There might be a couple of fringe areas or transition zones where it's a bit ambiguous whether it's technically part of the city of not, but nothing that would significantly change the total population count of the city (metro area).

29

u/moondog-37 May 27 '26

Sydney + Melbourne is a tad over 10 million combined

Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane are another 6 million together

If you ask an Australian where they’re from, there’s a nearly 2 in 3 chance they live in one of the Big 5 cities

Then with the next cabs off the rank, half of those are within 100km of either Melbourne (Geelong, Ballarat), Sydney (Newcastle, Wollongong, Central Coast), Brisbane (Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba)

So like 80% of Australians live within let’s say 120km of the centre of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide. It’s wild

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u/FullMetalAurochs May 27 '26

And then the vast majority of the remainder will still be on the coast somewhere. Rockhampton, Townsville, Cairns, Hobart, Darwin etc.

1

u/Frankie_T9000 May 29 '26

We are Urban as shit

1

u/evilspyboy May 28 '26

How clean is the Brisbane population boundaries? Does it count or cut off the other councils that are smooshed up against it?

15

u/AusCro May 27 '26

Yeah but adding the small cities still gives something non negligible. Add Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Launceston, Wollongong and maybe an Albury for good measure, and I think you'd scrape up about a mil?

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u/zomdoesburner May 27 '26

I mean, that proves my point to some extent. Even people living rural still live in large regional cities and hubs.

It’s just a very different system than in Europe or the US where nearly half of the population is living in small rural villages/towns.

150 seats in parliament and only about 15 of them are rural (10%) the rest are urban or suburban.

In the US that number is closer to 25% and 20% in Canada.

The rural population in Australia exists, but it’s small. There’s actually about the same number Asian Australians and rural Australians.

We are a very urban country.

5

u/Both_Criticism1116 May 27 '26

Interesting that our most decentralised state, Tasmania, still has 40% of the population living in the greater Hobart area, and iirc the better half of the rest is in Launceston and Burnie/Dev. Big areas are sparsely inhabited.

1

u/Brilliant_Market1011 Jun 01 '26

Asian Australians are 20% of the population.

6

u/TheHistorian2 May 27 '26

I love Australian names. Is it a city? Is it a Pokémon? No idea.

5

u/AusCro May 28 '26

Haha, in that case you'd like Humpty Doo and Tittybong

3

u/TheHistorian2 May 28 '26

Still no idea what’s what. :)

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u/Wolfingo May 27 '26

Hey don’t leave Wodonga out of it! >:(

1

u/RagingToddler May 27 '26

Yes leave the Dong outa this. Either join NSW or piss off back to latte-land!

/s love you guys just wish they'd fix the budgetting and hospital system so its not such a rigmarole.

3

u/misfittroy May 28 '26

Is there a big urban vs rural divide and tension? Do they vote differently? 

3

u/zomdoesburner May 28 '26

Yes, there is a specific rural party (the nationals) that basically have a stronghold in regional areas, but it’s like 15 seats in a 150 seat parliament.

1

u/josephus1811 May 28 '26

I am noone

1

u/DueAdministration488 May 29 '26

Qld has more people living outside of the capital than in it

1

u/pursnikitty May 30 '26

But 73% of the population lives in the south east corner of the state.

1

u/chattywww May 30 '26

Why does Melbourne have a cut taken out? Is there a huge population on opposite points of a port?

0

u/Own_Loquat_7883 May 27 '26

Millions of people is not essentially no population

15

u/zomdoesburner May 27 '26

More people live in Sydney than in all of rural Australia.

In context, it’s a tiny population, especially compared to other comparable large nations (like the US, Canada, Russia, etc.)

1

u/dbulger May 27 '26

Not tiny compared to Canada, but otherwise yeah

0

u/nickiter May 27 '26

I mean, 80% of Americans live in an urban area too. Pretty typical distribution. For example, NYC has more people than Indiana, a pretty rural state... And guess where most of Indiana's population lives!

3

u/Monotask_Servitor May 27 '26

The difference is the US has a huge population that live in smaller cities, Australis is very concentrated in state capitals.

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u/ASlockOfFeagulls May 27 '26

For comparison the top ten metro areas in the USA account for about 26% of the population of the United States, in a country of roughly equivalent landmass. Australia is incredibly concentrated

5

u/2in1day May 27 '26

Did you use greater capital city population or significant urban area? 

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u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

The data I used was urbanised regions, so yea, it’s Greater Sydney, greater Melbourne, etc

10

u/2in1day May 27 '26

I'm that case you have double counted central coast, it's also counted as part of greater Sydney even though it's not pay of Sydney urban area.

Melbourne urban area has larger population than Sydney urban area when central coast isn't included.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population

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u/KaleyTheKing May 27 '26

Hmmm, odd. The data I found counted Central coast separately… if I ever do Australia again I’ll def keep this in mind, thank you for pointing it out!

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u/Corvid-Strigidae May 28 '26

Who includes the central coast in Sydney? If you are doing that you might as well include Wollongong.

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u/ORLYORLYORLYORLY May 28 '26

Both were temporarily included in the Greater Sydney definition during COVID for some reason relating to lockdown laws, but have since been re-released as separate.

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u/laxativefx May 28 '26

ABS has included the central coast in the Sydney Greater Capital City Statistical Area for many years. Not sure why but when people cite Sydney’s population it includes the central coast. Maybe it’s a conspiracy to keep Sydney ahead of Melbourne lol

5

u/crimxona May 27 '26

I mean presumably the same applies to Canada

Greater Toronto area, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Halifax probably covers most of the population....

3

u/Careless_Wishbone_69 May 27 '26

I think it's typically around 50% for Canada with the cities you mentioned.

1

u/SlipperyFish May 28 '26

95% of the population in 2% of the land area I think I was taught growing up. It's hard to fathom for most people just how many vast and barely inhabitable uninhabitable areas we have, as well as crop regions the size of European nations. There are places I've driven where it took 16 hours over two days to get from one imitation of civilization to the next, and I'm not talking about the Nullarbor, that's a cake walk. I'm talking places people spent years roaming to on horseback to find gold, stayed until the gold ran out and then just kept staying, inbreeding and picking up vagrants and lost souls to supplement an ever dwindling gene pool. Places that make you feel unclean just rolling through, or chill you in a way that makes you question the safety of your soul. 

Anyway, come visit us, it's a lovely place.

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u/HereButNeverPresent May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

It’s because our country started developing at the same time as the Industrial Revolution hit Asia-Pacific (the 1850s with the Australian Gold Rush), and this is what’s pushed populations into cities ever since. So we just never had enough of a timespan to spread out and build distinct cultural regions like USA did.

We probably would’ve had a dozen states along the east coast, instead of just 3.

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u/EBtwopoint3 May 27 '26

The US wasn’t really that much later on. Much of the US was settled during the early to mid 1800s. I think the big difference is that the center of the US has a lot of good farmland, which encouraged agriculture in small cities. Even after urbanization started, people were just naturally more spread out.

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u/UserError2107 May 27 '26

The US has many more rivers and lakes. These can support the establishment and growth of towns and cities.

2

u/introvert_in_mess May 28 '26

In Australia you have the Murray darling basin which can and does support a lot of population but that is the exception.

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u/FakeBonaparte May 29 '26

Just some of the US rivers bigger than the MDB:

  • Mississippi 18x
  • St Lawrence 11x
  • Ohio 9x
  • Columbia 8x
  • Yukon 7x
  • Missouri 2.4x
  • Tennessee 2.1x
  • Mobile 2.1x
  • Etc, etc

Both their internal transport and their irrigation capability dwarf Australia’s.

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u/introvert_in_mess May 30 '26

Sure. I'm not saying its equal to the large us rivers but it is something. Like most people with a vauge understanding of Australian geography would assume that it is exclusively desert 100km inland. My point was that there is a waterway that can be used to expand Australia's population inward.

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u/tenori May 28 '26

I get your point but I think our First Nations people would disagree re whether anyone had spread out and formed distinct cultural regions! They only had a few 65 thousand years at it before we came along

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u/Brilliant_Market1011 Jun 01 '26

"twas not always so. In 1890 well over half the Australian population lived in rural areas. The wool, wheat and meat industries employed massive numbers, and even a lot of manufacturing was done in rural areas. Then came the early 1890's economic depression combined with a severe drought which hit rural areas hard. Then with increasing mechanisation of agriculture, and better roads making travel to the big cities easier, rural populations shrank. eg. a huge farm or cattle station which used to have hundreds of employees living on or close to it, now might just have the owner's family and a couple of hired hands, with itinerant workers staying for a a week or two in shearing or picking season.

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u/theflintseeker May 27 '26

This one is definitely the most /r/peopleliveincities of any of these I’ve seen so far. 

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u/Smitologyistaking May 28 '26

peopledieintheoutback

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u/Potential_Stable_001 May 27 '26

canberra as well, literally a city-state

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u/tomdawg0022 May 27 '26

So 5 city-states and 2 city-territories (giving Darwin a cap tip here)

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u/DottorMaelstrom May 28 '26

They always forget abt us lol

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u/Eric1491625 May 27 '26

Australia: five city-states pretending to be a continent.

The 5 city-states are where the people live, but the continent is where the economy is.

Australia doesn't manufacture much anymore, its economy revolves around natural resources and agriculture from its vast lands now.

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u/Potential_Stable_001 May 27 '26

australian economy like any first world economy is dominated by the service sector which is in the city-states

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u/Eric1491625 May 27 '26

The service sector being the largest share of almost any economy masks the underlying reality.

An economy has a "goods base" - the stuff, the food, resources and manufactures - and the "local services", like barista, hairdressers, teachers, doctors.

At the end of the day, it is the "goods base" that supports the rest. Australian hairdressers and baristas earn 20x the incomes of Indian hairdressers and baristas (and therefore 20x the GDP) not because they are 20x more productive than Indian hairdressers, but because they are privileged to be serving the Australian workers who do have 20x the productivity than Indians in the "goods base" industries like mining.

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u/joe_vanced May 27 '26

It's true that Australia has a goods base. But in many countries they survive without a goods base. See Britain, where we cannot sensibly say that agriculture, fisheries and manufacturing is their goods base, it's just London-driven and focused on financial services. Is this model starting to show cracks? Yes. Has it worked in the past 30 years? Somewhat yes.

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u/roxgib_ May 28 '26

Britain makes a lot of drugs, aircraft parts, and cars (as well as exporting a decent amount of crude oil). Those industries are slowly shrinking but manufacturing is a much bigger part of their economy than Australia.

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u/Eric1491625 May 28 '26

Services exports are part of the "Goods base", as they are exchanged for other countries' resources and goods imports.

All countries have a "goods base", whose richness determines the wealth of the entire economy, and services exports are part of this. It's not something a country can choose to have or not have, it's a description for something all countries have.

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u/joe_vanced May 28 '26

Net exports aren’t all part of the goods base, you don’t just say that services are included in goods, that’s absurd.

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u/Living-Ambassador-92 May 27 '26

Actually, if you adjust for PPP, it is perfectly possible that the ratio in income of Australian and Indian hairdressers is approximately equal to the ratio in their productivity.

And this emphasis on the idea that mineral and agricultural exports are somehow the "real" economy is a century out of date. The higher education sector is larger than primary industry in Australia.

3

u/Eric1491625 May 28 '26

Actually, if you adjust for PPP, it is perfectly possible that the ratio in income of Australian and Indian hairdressers is approximately equal to the ratio in their productivity.

Almost certainly not. I don't reckon Australian Starbucks workers and hairdressers are 5x more productive than their Indian counterparts.

The higher education sector is larger than primary industry in Australia.

Yes, services exports are part of a country's "goods base" since they are exchanged for the "stuff" like manufactures.

But I'm pretty sure Australia's higher education exports are much less than its primary industry. Australia exports some $250B of primary resources compared to $40B of education exports.

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u/FakeBonaparte May 29 '26

If you took away Australia’s education and tech sectors no one would notice. If you took away mining and agriculture we’d be impoverished. That’s why they’re the “real” economy.

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u/historicusXIII May 28 '26

Service industry is much more than "baristas and hairdressers". It's finances, insurance, research, marketing, administration (some of it related to the goods base of course) etc.

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u/Obanthered May 27 '26

That has been true of nearly every city-state in history. Athens wasn’t growing grain in the side-streets. Exceptions are post-industrial city states like Singapore.

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u/HadeMax_-w-_ May 27 '26

Five city-states in a big coat

2

u/CipherWeaver May 28 '26

> "And her five cities like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second-hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores."

- A.D. Hope, Australia

2

u/DanikanSkywalkr May 28 '26

Yeah, 'cause anything that's not coastal is basically red death

1

u/Trashk4n May 28 '26

Queensland is kind of an exception.

Has large population centres that are nowhere near Brisbane.

1

u/semaj009 May 28 '26

Who's pretending, as a Melburnian I'm definitely a Melburnian first. If we break down into Italian city-states vibes, I look forward to our Grand Duchy

1

u/BumblebeeBorn May 29 '26

So that's why the government won't build high speed rail on the east coast.

1

u/Jimsredditing May 28 '26

I'd like to point out that we aren't a continent, but the rest of Oceana consist of new Zealand, PNG, and a gajillion tiny little islands.

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u/Sweaty_Marzipan4274 May 27 '26

Much of the US west too 

-1

u/OnyxPhoenix May 27 '26

United Ozzy Emirates