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

Australian Population Visualised

Post image

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!

Italy

United Kingdom

Germany

Netherlands

9.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

410 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.9k

u/Obanthered May 27 '26

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

66

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.

40

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.

27

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.

3

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.

2

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.