In this week's #geoweirdness thread we leave Europe and turn our attention southward to ... Australia 🇦🇺
So what's geoweird about Australia?
1/n
2/ Well first, Australia 🇦🇺 is very big, twice the size of the EU 🇪🇺 , but it’s much bigger than you probably think, with many external islands.
Just like last week's country Norway 🇳🇴, Australia claims territory in Antarctica.
3/ The various islands are quite diverse, each with its own history and geography. Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean has Mawson Peak, Australia’s highest mountain, and active volcano 🌋
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawson_Peak
4/ The Cocos (Keeling) Islands 🇨🇨 (ISO code "CC") are very remote and only became part of Australia 🇦🇺 in 1955, having previously been part of the British Colony of Singapore 🇬🇧 🇸🇬
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocos_(Keeling)_Islands
5/ Many of Australia's smaller islands are tiny sea exclaves, outside of Australia's main territorial waters
6/ The administrative organisation of Australia 🇦🇺 is complex, with 6 states, 3 internal territories, and 7 external territories. The internal divisions have changed several times as the population grew.
All the details are over on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Australia
7/ As you can see in the map, New Zealand 🇳🇿 was originally part of the colony of New South Wales, and was later invited to join Australia as a state.
New Zealand said no.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/nz-says-no-aussie-federation
8/ Due to sheer size and difficult mapping conditions, it wasn’t always easy to survey Australia and this sometimes lead to disputes.
A long-running disagreement was the South Australia–Victoria border situation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia%E2%80%93Victoria_border_dispute
9/ The location of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) was specifically chosen as capital because it was midway between the two largest cities Sydney and Melbourne.
Then the tiny Jervis Bay Territory was created so the ACT would have access to the sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jervis_Bay_Territory
It's surprising how many countries move capital, 14 in last 50 years as we covered in the Oct 2022 #fridaygeotrivia
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-october-2022
10/ Final #geoweirdness fact: Australia is home to the worlds longest highway: Highway 1 - over 14,500 km / 9,000 miles 🛣️🚚🦘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_1_(Australia)
11/ We hope you enjoyed our look at Australian 🇦🇺 #geoweirdness. Thanks for reading (and sharing) 🙏
We have many more threads about other countries, border disputes, exclaves, geocoding, etc listed on our blog. Most still on twitter, but over time we are moving them here to masto.
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
We'll feature more countries in coming weeks and months
12/ Final bonus #geoweirdness tweet - here's a world map from the Australian 🇦🇺 perspective 🤯
