Where in the World?...

Many times I am asked about information concerning Australia, and travel advice or info on arrangements, but it has also been interesting in my time in the US, how often people are confused by where Australia actually is, how big it is.  Often in general conversation, Australia is easily confused with Austria, which is in Europe.  Though, I have to tell you, its nowhere near Austria and is quite a distance from the US, in fact, Australia's closest neighbor is Indonesia. 

 

Click on Map to make it larger 

 

Notice Australia down the bottom right.  Its big. Its next to New Zealand and pretty close to Papua New Guinea, as well as Indonesia. In fact, from the top of Australia, it only takes about 30 minutes to fly to Papua New Guinea.  If you take a look at mainland US and compare the sizes you can see how close the countries are in size.

 

Now, if you can read it, because the writing and numbers are rather small, notice Russia, then look to the lower left of Russia... the smaller countries such as Germany? If you look at Germany, then you'll see Poland.  If you look at the little orange area on the right of Germany and the left of Poland, kind of underneath it, that is... Austria.

 

Australia, Austria... Austria has a few letters short, but you may be able to see why its sometimes confused.

 

Australia is in the Pacific, near Asia.  If you fly over Hawaii, you're usually going in the right direction.  Austria is in Europe, closer to the North Atlantic.  Needless to say, if you're headed to Austria, and you fly over Hawaii, you may want to contact your travel agent, or replan your sight seeing trips.  You should be flying over the atlantic ocean towards France.

 

Australia is only about 10,000 sq foot (yes sq foot) smaller than the US mainland which means its difficult to walk from Perth to Sydney.  Thats pretty close to saying you are going to walk from Florida to California. You can not drive to Perth in an hour from Brisbane.  Brisbane and Perth are practically across the country from each other. A similar distance would be the coast of North Carolina to the coast of California.

 

So any trip you take to Australia, be prepared to spend more than a week there if you want to see a few different places, if you can. 

 

As always, happy to answer questions about Australia.  Just let me know by either posting a question, or comment, or you can always email any time

 

Catch ya later!

W&W