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.
@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…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
@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"...
@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.