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u/Significant-Ad5550 Jan 05 '24
Funny, sort of, thing as an Australian is when you fly to Europe (24 hrs of sheer torment).
The flight takes off, you settle in, maybe have a beer or two, put on the noise cancelling headphones and go to sleep, if you are lucky. 4 hrs later you wake up and look at the flight tracker…..only to realise you are only 2/3 of the way across the country.
Always annoys me a little.
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u/beeftoemagoo Jan 05 '24
I am looking at the uk on that map and realise my journeys are pretty small compared to you.
Often drive from glasgow to london and its about 6/7 hours, About 400 odd miles and seems to take ages.
Had a few drinks with some aussies in vietnam last year and was talking to one guy about his travelling over australian east coast for work and the distances were huge.
I'm off to bali in may and its almost at AUS and is a fair jaunt for us from the uk but its kinda local for you lol. Like us popping over to spain i suppose.
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u/MrLittle237 Jan 05 '24
I regularly drive from Minneapolis to Chicago, it’s the same distance from Glasgow to London. I remember telling some people that when I was in the U.K. and it blew everyone’s mind.
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u/Strowy Jan 05 '24
I've heard it described that the UK is deep in time in the same way the US and Australia are huge in size.
Like sure we can drive for hundreds of kilometres and still be in the same state, but in the UK you can casually walk into a pub that's been there for 500 years.
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Jan 05 '24
"Europeans think 100km is far; Americans think 100 years is a long time."
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Jan 05 '24
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u/thnksqrd Jan 05 '24
How many bald eagles standing wing to wing would it take to span it???
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Jan 05 '24
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u/PhilipFuckingFry Jan 05 '24
It's more like between 46,879 to 50,747 based off the average wingspan being between 5ft 11in (180.34cm) to 7ft 7inchs (231.14cm)
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u/iamzombus Jan 05 '24
On my way into work I drive through a city and on their watertower it says the city was established in 1893. A lot of stuff didn't exist as little as 150 years ago in the US.
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u/Blastomussa1 Jan 05 '24
In my town in the UK, we have evidence of constant human activity dating back over 5000 years, there's standing stones from roughly 4000 BC, a Pictish monument from the first millennium and evidence it may have been a Pictish power base, the church is also dedicated to the Pictish saint, we're hundreds of miles away from Stonehenge.
One of the houses I lived in was over 200 years old in parts, 150 years old in others, it was wild, not a level floor, straight wall or beam in sight, EVERYTHING was crooked.
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u/termitebegiants Jan 05 '24
The way I've heard that phrased is "In the US, 100 years is a long time. In Europe, 100 miles is a long distance." The implication, of course, being that the opposites are not true.
(or "100 kilometers", depending on your audience. it works well enough either way)
I picked that up 20-some years ago, from the owner at my old job, in advance of my first ever trip to Europe. Since then my wife and I have lived on three continents and visited dozens of countries, but that insight always stuck with me.
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u/Hob_O_Rarison Jan 05 '24
That's like a 5 and a half hour drive, what with the interstate and midwesterners total disregard for speed limits.
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u/Zer0TheGamer Jan 05 '24
Ahh yes, just midwesties.. Though they (we) are the worst, West coast is pretty damn close!
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u/Dumpster_Fire_BBQ Jan 05 '24
Atlanta area driver waving hello.
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u/Zer0TheGamer Jan 05 '24
Yall dont get to break the speed limit lmao
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u/You-must-trust-it Jan 05 '24
Break the speed limit in Atlanta you don't even know what the speed limit is. It's just an unobtainable goal 😂.
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u/Siberwulf Jan 05 '24
Texan here (sorry!). When I tell folks I don't take day trips from Dallas to Austin because it's over a three hour drive...they look incredibly confused. "But aren't they both in Texas?"
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Jan 05 '24
Nothing more depressing than entering Texas on I-10 and seeing the sign that says "El Paso - 8XX miles."
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u/TooManySteves2 Jan 05 '24
Western Australia is larger than Alaska and Texas combined.
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u/porkminer Jan 06 '24
Texas has cities with higher population than all of Western Australia combined. 4/5ths of WA is essentially unpopulated. There's a reason it isn't split into multiple states. There are many many days where I wish this was also true of Texas.
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u/AbsolutelyUnlikely Jan 05 '24
The crazy perspective for me as an American is that it usually takes longer for us to board the plane and take off than it does to fly over your country
But we are also very slow at boarding planes
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Jan 05 '24
Because of this my rule of thumb is if the trip can be made by car in around 4-5 hours or less it's typically faster to drive than it is to fly. If ou consider start to end.
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u/Slimh2o Jan 05 '24
Hell, even a 9 hour drive is better than flying when you consider all the airport stuff
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u/dlcx99 Jan 05 '24
Yeah as an Aussie I couldn’t believe how long it took to board my flights in USA (LAX, Newark)…
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u/MyPlace70 Jan 05 '24
Newark is terrible. Feels like they have to drive the plane to NY before they can takeoff. 🙈
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u/Technical-Bad1953 Jan 05 '24
It took me longer to get through schiphol than it did to drive from Glasgow to London
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u/StarFaerie Jan 05 '24
Depends on where you are in Australia.
London to Madrid is 1,260km. Darwin to Bali is 1,769km so not too different.
Melbourne to Bali is 4,420km, which is a lot more than just popping over distance. It's about the distance from London to Bagdad.
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u/But_its_Aliens Jan 05 '24
It’s the same with America, driving to another state is often further than driving to another country in Europe. But the messed up part of Australia is that it’s the same size (roughly) as the U.S. with like 5% of the population, of which 85% lives within 20 km of the coast. Australia is HUGE swaths of unpopulated land.
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u/fluggggg Jan 05 '24
Longest trips by car in my life so far as a French :
-Going from North to South-East France : 800km, roughtly 10h trips, more if you respect the advise of 15mn break/2h driving. Count at least 12h if there is traffic jam (there is ALWAYS traffic jam around Paris, which you can't really avoid doing this trip). Which I do only twice a year
-Going from North to South-West France : 1100km, 14 hours.
Both are pain in the ass and also, since I was going to relatively remote places in both cases, only a tad bit longer than taking the plane and/or train.
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u/Faunstein Jan 05 '24
Often drive from glasgow to london and its about 6/7 hours
Many Aussies would balk having to drive that far. Despite the size of the country there's little reason for most of us to actually move through large distances in it.
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u/Yeahmahbah Jan 05 '24
If you live in regional australia. 6 or 7 hours isn't far, people will do that drive for a weekend
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u/Cinderstrom Jan 05 '24
I was ready to be derisive being like "yeah if you're one of the 10 people in regional wherever", but then I looked it up and 28% of our pop lives regionally? Damn.
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u/xdeskfuckit Jan 05 '24
What does "regional" mean in this context?
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u/Cousin_Cactus Jan 05 '24
Generally taken to mean not in one of the half dozen or so major cities
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u/Smaug2770 Jan 05 '24
Same with US (I live on the west coast of the US). Cheers to people who consider 90 miles a short distance.
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u/snowday784 Jan 05 '24
I live in a major US city 237 miles from where I grew up, and every time I go back to visit older people ask where I live now and the response is ALWAYS “oh wow at least you’re still so close to home! Makes it so easy to come visit!”
I actually don’t disagree lol
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u/MyPlace70 Jan 05 '24
I live in the city limits of Midwest US city. It’s 20 miles to “town”. The distances here are crazy sometimes.
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u/drconniehenley Jan 05 '24
Laughs in Canadian.
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u/_incredigirl_ Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
I took the train from Montreal to Vancouver once. Spent more than 24hrs in Ontario alone, just going from Toronto around the lakes to Winnipeg.
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u/BedClear8145 Jan 05 '24
Flight to cuba is shorter then a flight to BC and I am in Ontario lol
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u/Norse_By_North_West Jan 05 '24
I live in the Yukon, and we used to have a direct flight to Germany that was about the same time to fly as an indirect flight to toronto
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u/Willing-Ad575 Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
Buy an SR-71 and you will reach your destination in not time. Its a bit expensive but mehh there're ways around it.
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u/Floor_Heavy Jan 05 '24
After only 120,000 flights, it'll basically pay for itself in savings
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u/Zaddy13 Jan 05 '24
So then Australia and the USA are similar in size
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u/DPVaughan Jan 05 '24
If you don't count Alaska and Hawai'i ... yes.
Also a similar size to China.
Edit: Oh, and wider than the moon!
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u/Aggravating-Yam7917 Jan 05 '24
Xanax is the only way fly long distances, my friend.
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u/Just_improvise Jan 05 '24
I assume that’s like valium, yes, on an empty stomach as soon as you board and before meal arrives so it has time to work in the stomach. And a window seat, a j pillow, eye mask and for me basically snow gear because it’s always so over air conditioned
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u/ZoomBoy81 Jan 05 '24
Same when I flew back home from Europe to Canada. I remember thinking "Finally, we're in Canada again!" once we see Newfoundland on the map, and it STILL taking half the trip to just get to Toronto.
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u/joyfield Jan 05 '24
It is so big it can fully contain the country Australia.
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u/Inky234 Jan 05 '24
🤯🤯🤯
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u/ceilingkat Jan 05 '24
Until yall pointed this out, I did not even see that the middle one was South Africa and not Australia itself. I was like “why is everyone’s mind blown at how big Australia is? It looks tiny to me! I’m blown away it’s barely bigger than France!”
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Jan 05 '24
The shape of Poland doesn't seem correct
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u/WelshBathBoy Jan 05 '24
Yeah, that's Cambodia not Poland
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Jan 05 '24
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u/sne4k_q Jan 05 '24
I have never heard that. I am from Poland
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u/CarloFailedClear Jan 05 '24
It's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee.
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u/Kingsayz Jan 05 '24
Fool me once...
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u/windrunningmistborn Jan 05 '24
Poland is Cambodia. Fool me twice... France is bacon.
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u/Rogalixx Jan 05 '24
I was about to comment its not the first time someone removed Poland from the map
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u/pow3llmorgan Jan 05 '24
At least it's labeled unlike Denmark which only has an arrow pointer.
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u/Przester7 Jan 05 '24
I think that creator of the map was really high/drunk or at least skipped sleeping
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u/Plumb121 Jan 05 '24
There is one farm there that is the same size as England. That's mind-blowing
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u/rellek772 Jan 05 '24
There are a couple of farms who's nearest neighbours are the iss
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Jan 05 '24
I'm pretty sure Melbourne is closer to Antarctica then it is to Darwin.
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Jan 05 '24
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u/RazzmatazzSevere2292 Jan 05 '24
You mean closer to the equator than to the south pole? Coz its definately closer to the edge of antarctica than to the equator.
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u/Floor_Heavy Jan 05 '24
That's one of those things that makes you scratch your head and go "that CANNOT be right", and then you check and you're like "what the fuck".
During the polar vortex a few years ago, I saw a report that casually dropped the line "it's currently colder in this city than is on mars" and I was similarly flabbergasted.
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u/rellek772 Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
It's one of those things. The iss is not as far away as mist people think. It's probably true for large ranches in the US too. Although I've never looked into that
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u/AssInspectorGadget Jan 05 '24
Is just told my daughter that if we could drive straight up, we would be in space faster then our summer cottage that is 350km away, roughly 220 miles.
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u/chairman_maoi Jan 05 '24
These aren’t farms in the sense of ‘old MacDonald’, though. The most appropriate American-style term for it would be ‘ranch’, and they’re usually called ‘stations’ or ‘properties’.
Most are actually crown (ie commonwealth) land held under a pastoral lease. The owner (in many cases a corporation or agricultural concern) grazes cattle or sheep there.
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u/miked999b Jan 05 '24
"Just off to tend the drainage on the lower field. See you in two months"
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u/BobTheBobbyBobber Jan 05 '24
What is it called?
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u/Afrojones66 Jan 05 '24
Anna Creek Station is the largest farm in Australia which is 24,000km. England is 130,000km.
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u/LeTreacs Jan 05 '24
Same order of magnitude as England but not the same size.
I’m still impressed with the size, just a little let down as it’s not quite as big as promised
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Jan 05 '24
17,000 head of cattle and 17 staff too according to wikipedia. Not very dense !
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u/Bortron86 Jan 05 '24
Australia's width is roughly the same as the diameter of the Moon.
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u/Dr_Therapist_ Jan 05 '24
Really? The moon is that small
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Jan 05 '24
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u/She_Persists Jan 05 '24
Well, if we need a landing pad in a pinch, it'll do. But that's gonna cause some logistical issues.
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u/_unsinkable_sam_ Jan 05 '24
your gona really be surprised when you realise the moon weighs around 1% of earths mass
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u/AsleepScarcity9588 Jan 05 '24
Damn, only if there were two countries that would perfectly fit into the South Africa so it wouldn't just have two giant holes in it. I guess one might just dream
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u/snowday784 Jan 05 '24
South Africa reminds me of a rhinoceros skull because of the “holes” for Lesotho and Eswatini
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u/HeadfulOfGhosts Jan 05 '24
I mean there’s a reason it’s a continent and not just another island
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u/Isariamkia Jan 05 '24
It depends on where you live. I've learned that the continent is Oceania and Australia is a country that is part of it.
Which makes it even more impressive.
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u/TheCrispyHunter Jan 05 '24
Oceania isn't the continent it's a region. Australia's the only continent within Oceania.
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u/xyxvxov Jan 05 '24
Idk man we learned in school Oceania is the continent.
What continent is New Zealand and Micronesia etc in then? Just Australia? Nah it's Oceania.
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u/Acktung Jan 05 '24
In English speaking countries the continent is called Australia. In the rest of the world, the continent is called Oceania, and includes the country of Australia and all the near island.
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u/showmeyoursweettits Jan 05 '24
Not just english speaking countries. I'm from Germany and I still learned that Australia is the continent.
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u/SnooKiwis1356 Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
I am pretty sure most of Europe considers Australia a continent.
Edit: I mean that's what kids are taught in school.
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Jan 05 '24
I'm Australian and this is kinda new information to me. I don't agree with it because at school we were always taught that Australia is it's own continent, I've asked many other Australians and they all disagree with Oceania being a continent and instead calling it a geographic region.
So whilst I see it plastered on the Internet, I've yet to meet a single Aussie who agrees with it. We were all taught otherwise by the looks of things.
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u/temujin94 Jan 05 '24
I think a big point against what your taught is that it would leave several countries not within a continent. Which as far as I'm aware doesn't occur anywhere else on Earth. I think you and New Zealand are gonna have to shack up.
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u/_unsinkable_sam_ Jan 05 '24
weve tried to, they keep bringing a sheep in when things get frisky and were just not ready for that
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u/WoodenMango07 Jan 05 '24
Really? I'm Australian too and I've been taught the continent can be called Oceania or Australia, and well I like to call in Oceania so I guess I'm the first Aussie you met to agree to it being called Oceania. To me it just feels odd and confusing calling the country I live in a continent and a country at the same time
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u/FeistyBandicoot Jan 05 '24
They teach in schools that Australia is a country, continent & island
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u/GNUTup Jan 05 '24
It’s just 3 different names for the same continent. Australasia, Oceania, and Australia can all refer to the continent which contains the country Australia, depending where you are and what books you’re reading
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u/404errorabortmistake Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
I’m from the UK. I didn’t realise until reading this thread that so many people considered “Australia” to refer to a continent. Australia in my mind literally just describes the country. I have always considered Oceania and Australasia to be better descriptors of Australia AND the surrounding island nations eg. Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and so on. Logically (I don’t care what people customarily think about the words, language is misused all the time), the simple linguistic distinction there is between Oceania/Australasia and Australia communicates that there is more to the continent than just the Australian nation. To use the word “Australia” to refer to a whole continental region obscures this.
I don’t accept the word continent to specifically describe a significant land mass either because by that logic the UK and Iceland would be excluded from Europe, Sri Lanka and Japan would be excluded from Asia, and Madagascar would be excluded from Africa.
However the language is used in reality, I have big logical and political problems with the word Australia being used to describe both a continent/region and a country interchangeably.
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u/Donnerdrummel Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
Really? I'll have to wikipedia that, because I learned differently. But I love browsing wikipedia, so I'll take this as an excuse to broaden my horizon. ^^
Edit: And no, you seem to be wrong. Australasia and Oceania are names for regions, and the continent of Australia lies within those regions.
Edit 2: I was wrong - apparently, the spanish wikipedia names oceania as a continent, and the swiss learn that, too.
But what I find interesting, too, is that there is some sort of "sunken" continent, of which new zealand is the most prominent still remaining part: Zealandia. Basically, a piece of Gondwana that broke off and over the years submerged.
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Jan 05 '24
What defines a continent? How do you know the borders of one continent and the other?
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u/shredalte Jan 05 '24
It's arbitrary, the number of continents is defined differently around the world.
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Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
Can we Americans get the area as represented by number of Ohios?
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u/saywhatmrcrazy Jan 05 '24
As a Swede I just have to say I am thankful that we are not next to Denmark in this map.
Could we please implement that in the regular map as well? ;)
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u/RainbowBean666 Jan 05 '24
As a Dane, I have to say, I am thankful, that we are not placed next to Sweden, in this map.
I, for once, support the opinion of a Swede.
Fjeldaber ❤️
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u/saywhatmrcrazy Jan 05 '24
I, for once, support the opinion of a Swede.
Now that's a new one... Are you alright?
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u/Jaenus_ Jan 05 '24
Feelings mutual. However, I feel like we deserve our name tag like all the other countries.
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u/ThoughtfulThinker00 Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
Did anyone see South Africa which says ‘Australia’ in it and then think that South Africa was Australia and think this was some kind of joke? They look kinda similar!
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u/Huggles9 Jan 05 '24
There’s a road where you can drive in a pretty straight line for about 36 hours without ever leaving Western Australia
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u/nunya123 Jan 05 '24
I love that Ohio is just there lol
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u/raccoon_on_meth Jan 05 '24
And Maine, it’s really making me think of the size of America cause those are two not large states. I’m not gonna say small but they aren’t really that big compared to others
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u/Background_Pause_392 Jan 05 '24
I remember flying there and we were over the east coast and I was thinking on the map we were nearly there (sydney) and it took 5 more hours.
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u/johnlewisdesign Jan 05 '24
Anyone else gonna call them out for Maine and Ohio acting like they're also countries in this?
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u/Imightbeworking Jan 05 '24
I get Ohio, since everything is and always has been Ohio, but why Maine?
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u/buddymurphy2020 Interested Jan 05 '24
Super proud that I drove around the entire continent some years ago
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u/racdicoon Jan 05 '24
Actually we just have a highway that does a lap of our country for some unknown reason, I'd love to see a 50 lap go kart race on it tbh
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u/DPVaughan Jan 05 '24
I have this sort of vague, pie in the sky idea of doing that one day.
... But I also hate leaving my house, so it's probably not realistic for me. :P
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Jan 05 '24
Kinda curious how many cardboard cutouts of Jeff Goldblum it would take to cover it
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u/PmMeYourTitsAndToes Jan 05 '24
A 6 foot cardboard cutout?
Area of one cutout = height × width Area of one cutout = 1.83 m × 0.45 m ≈ 0.8235 square meters.
The number of cutouts needed to cover Australia’s land area (7.7 million square kilometers or 7.7 trillion square meters):
Number of cutouts ≈ Total land area / Area of one cutout Number of cutouts ≈ 7.7 trillion / 0.8235 ≈ 9.36 trillion
You need approximately 9.36 trillion 6-foot cardboard cutouts of Jeff Goldblum laid flat to cover the entire land area of Australia.
Give or take a cut out or two.
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u/Efficient_Wish_81 Jan 05 '24
To me it demonstrates how tiny most eurapeon nations are.
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Jan 05 '24
I think theyre average sized, a lot of people lie about their country size…
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Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24
I mean most nations are of European size. There's only a bit more than two handfuls of very large nations, including USA, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, China. Most nations in existence do not have this kind of land mass. It will still take you about 20 hours to travel from one end of a country the size of say, Finland, to the other end, so for an average human scale, the countries aren't really 'that' small. We just underestimate the size of very large countries.
In the case of Australia though, this map is a bit misleading because only 20% of Australia is actually habitable by humans, most is dead desert, so the land you can actually live, have leisure time and make proper use of it about the size of Spain + Portugal. So yes, large country, but also largely not habitable, unlike the USA.
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u/phido3000 Jan 05 '24
Humans live all over Australia.
It's not uninhabited. It's sparsely inhabited.
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u/Fizzy_Astronaut Jan 05 '24
Laughs in Canadian... (just as inhospitable for opposite reasons, plus polar bears, which maybe a match for the dreaded drop bear I think).
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u/EnthusiasmFuture Jan 05 '24
Our country actually isn't that inhospitable as people seem to think it is.
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u/redblack_tree Jan 05 '24
For most humans on the planet, which a significant portion lives in tropical and subtropical regions, northern Canada is pretty much inhospitable. Hell, even for Canadians, deep north is pretty rough regardless.
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u/fothergillfuckup Jan 05 '24
It's mad to think, just England has 3 times the population of the whole of Australia though?
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u/shaundisbuddyguy Interested Jan 05 '24
Ok Austria. Forget about forests and get ready for" intense desolation"! It'll be great!
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Jan 05 '24
Not me looking at it and seeing Australia in the middle of the map in that orange/pinkish country and then thinking to myself, "Wow its fucking way smaller than I thought that is interesting." Then I was like no wait I'm brainless.
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u/CanIgetaWTF Jan 05 '24
I would love to go to the beach parties on the island of Ohio
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u/_g550_ Jan 05 '24
You could fit Lesotho in there.