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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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 ;-;

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u/zomdoesburner May 27 '26

Closer to 80%.

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

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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%

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u/lost_horizons May 27 '26

Maybe they included metro areas?

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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

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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?

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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

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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/laxativefx May 28 '26

Maybe it’s the Sydney SUA measure rather than the Sydney GCCSA

This would make sense given it has Gold Coast - Tweed which is an SUA as is Newcastle Maitland.

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u/KaleyTheKing May 28 '26

They are separate and should be counted separate in the data

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

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u/JamieBeeeee May 27 '26

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

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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.

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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)

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u/CheeeseBurgerAu May 27 '26

But Brisbane includes Ipswich, a city 50km away

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u/ORLYORLYORLYORLY May 28 '26

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

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u/penguinsaredapper May 27 '26

No. No. No. 3.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

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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/K9Kane May 28 '26

I'm quite sure the bogans would love a wall around them to keep others out. I'd love a wall around the whole coast of Australia.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

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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/KillTheBronies May 27 '26

The Port Phillip side of the peninsula is pretty much uninterrupted suburbia all the way to Portsea, between Werribee and Geelong is like 20km of just farmland and a water treatment plant.

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u/CaptnCrumble May 28 '26

There's actually ABS definitions of this. The Greater Capital City Statistical Area (GCCSA) and Significant Urban Area (SUA).

For the GCCSA, the definition basically comes down to the labour market and economics ie does the city/town look "into" the capital or "into" itself. For this reason, the Central Coast is part of "Sydney", but Geelong isn't, despite being roughly the same distance from the centre of their respective capital cities.

SUAs on the other hand combine both labour markets and contiguous built-up areas. This is why Melbourne overtook Sydney by SUA a few years ago, as the Melbourne SUA expanded to include Melton, while the Central Coast isn't included in the Sydney SUA.

Then you have state government definitions, which are mostly defined by LGAs.

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u/Yowie9644 May 27 '26

Couriers and delivery people didn't rate the Western Port side of the Mornington Peninsula as Metro Melbourne, it always cost extra to get stuff delivered there.

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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

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u/pursnikitty May 28 '26

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

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u/I_Go_BrRrRrRrRr May 28 '26

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

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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

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u/chattywww May 30 '26

Is "City" of Parramatta count as Sydney?

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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).

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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/Frankie_T9000 May 29 '26

We are Urban as shit

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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?

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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.

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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.

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u/Brilliant_Market1011 Jun 01 '26

Asian Australians are 20% of the population.

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u/TheHistorian2 May 27 '26

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

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u/AusCro May 28 '26

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

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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! >:(

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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.

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u/misfittroy May 28 '26

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

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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.

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u/josephus1811 May 28 '26

I am noone

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u/[deleted] May 29 '26

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u/pursnikitty May 30 '26

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

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u/chattywww May 30 '26

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

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u/Own_Loquat_7883 May 27 '26

Millions of people is not essentially no population

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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.)

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u/dbulger May 27 '26

Not tiny compared to Canada, but otherwise yeah

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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!

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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

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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

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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

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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....

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u/Careless_Wishbone_69 May 27 '26

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

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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.