True size of Australia

Warrigal

Warrigal

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Location
Sydney, Australia
When planning a visit to Australia do remember that the land mass is approximately the same area as continental USA. It is impossible to see it all in one week. It is also expensive to criss cross the country by air.

This image where the map of Australia has other countries superimposed patchworklike, gives some idea of its real size.



The misunderstanding about the size of the Australian continent is probably due to the mercator projection that exaggerates areas far from the equator.

The Mercator projection (/mərˈkeɪtər/) is a cylindrical map projection presented by Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for navigation because it is unique in representing north as up and south as down everywhere while preserving local directions and shapes. The map is thereby conformal. As a side effect, the Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator. This inflation is very small near the equator but accelerates with increasing latitude to become infinite at the poles. As a result, landmasses such as Greenland, Antarctica, Canada and Russia appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator, such as Central Africa.
Click to expand...
 

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When I was in the U.S. Navy, I hoped I'd visit Australia one day but it didn't happen we ever had a port visit there on the ships I served.

Likely had I been fortunate, it would have been Perth. That seems to be where most U.S. Navy ships pull in. At least back then.

Sailors who I spoke with and who'd been there said it was great. The locals liked sailors.
 
How much difference in square miles are there between Australia and the U.S.? I’m not doubting you, but it sure appears that the U.S. is larger than Australia.
 
We flew to Melbourne, went sightseeing and then went by train to Sydney. You see a lot more than by flying. The folks on the train were friendly. You never saw so many sheep in your life. After seeing Sydney including kangaroos and other critters, my wife got to hold a koala.
Then we flew up to Cairns and went snorkeling on the barrier reef. We took a tour into the rain forest and then it was time to go home.
 
@oldman, according to google, US is 3,797,173 square miles and Australia is 2,968,402

However USA size would include Alaska which is 663,268

so, taking out Alaska, USA is only slightly bigger.
 

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