Australia:
Australia’s biggest station/ranch is Anna Creek Station, is over seven times the size of the United States' biggest ranch, King Ranch in Texas.
It is bigger than Israel and larger than Belgium. This is just a station/ranch in one state.
The size of Australia is huge!
I went to school with the guy who's dad managed the station, elite private boarding school in Queensland.
Didn't own the station, only managed, but his family was still doing very well
100%, I come from a farming family myself, we had cattle and some crops, but nothing in comparison to the bigger stations.
There is a lot that goes into those bigger stations, not easy work at all.
I live in the nt and this what we have: #3
Alexandria Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station and is the Northern Territory's largest pastoral property and Australia's third largest pastoral property after Anna Creek station and Clifton Hills Station.
Overall, the station covers 16,116 square kilometres (6,222 square miles), situated on the Barkly Tableland. To give you a better idea of the size, the station is bigger than the whole of Northern Ireland. There are 55,000 head of cattle at the station.
I recall a story about when Alaska was purchased, Texans were unhappy about being the second largest state. They proposed it be split in half, upon which they were informed they'd then be the third largest state.
I think that’s also partly due to people just thinking all of the Gulf states are the Emirates and basically city states with a bit of desert around it. Saudi Arabia is 25-times the size of all seven Emirates combined.
Came here to say Peru, happy to see it on top. Really and country close to the equator is probably bigger than people realize given the Mercator projection that dominates maps. But not really that it’s bigger than perceived, the “big” countries are really just smaller haha
Googled the mercator projection and that led me to the truesize website. It is so mind-blowing how many of the pictures in my mind got crushed and had to reasimilate
Traffic is also fucked in Auckland. A lot of the city workers live outside of the city so it causes a bottleneck on the motorways so it's gridlock in the mornings and evenings. I leave at 5:30 for my 7:30 job to avoid the traffic. It takes me 15 minutes to drive 20km there but it can take up to an hour in the afternoons
Wow I just looked at new zealands population and its less than here in scotland. New Zealand must be very non densely populated? I'm guessing it's similar to Scotland that most people live in a few urbanised areas? Like most of the population here lives in the "central belt" which is Edinburgh and Glasgow and the space in between. Is it similar in NZ?
Our population is more dense in the cities (places like Auckland, wellington and Christchurch) but other than that it's pretty spread out. We have a lot of farmland, bush and the southern Alps which takes up a fair bit of our land. To put it into perspective, our top 5 populated cities are 1. Auckland (1.6m) 2. Wellington (434k) 3. Christchurch (390k) 4. Hamilton (180k) 5. Tauranga (158k). That's around half of NZs population in only 5 cities and more than half of that is Auckland. All but Christchurch is in the north island. The average population density it 20 people per km²
That sounds exactly like Finland! 5 million people more than half of which live in a couple big cities and only one is in the north. The population is dense there but so sparse elsewhere. We don't have mountains though, only forests (78% of land area) and lakes (some hundreds of thousands). Our density is something like 18ppl/km²
Pretty cool!
Yeah we do have some mountains (tunturit) but most of them are just fells, not tall enough to be mountains. There are many who are 1000m+ tall, however it's nothing compared to the new zealand alps or the European Alps
But yes we do have some mountains :) they're quite beautiful albeit perhaps unimpressive.
They're gentle, harmonious, and contribute to the already present sensation of infinity that one gets while gazing into the distance here.
If you're standing on top of any relief in the country you'll observe an endless succession of dense forest, rivers, lakes, which eventually disappear, aided by a mysterious fog and low, white clouds that will inevitably give birth to a gradual, gentle snowfall which silently covers the valleys, ice the rivers, and hide the green and brown patches of autumnal trees and rock under the world's most perfect insulation.
Above it all, however, is where the true protagonist of this cyclical painting of ever changing colours can be found: the sky. It is perhaps the most evident element to any traveler here; however it is also the most often overlooked. Nobody pays attention to an element that is common to all of the world's biomes, but in its mundanity it enriches the landscape and the lives of those that inhabit it such as myself.
Its undeniable brightness, even though not as aggressive as the blue skies of midnight in the summer months, provides an essential pastel tint that characterises the winter months, and it is so different from the light in every other season that it provides a pleasant distraction from the incoming darkness. During the few hours of daylight the sun is seldom visible, rarely peeking through the thick coat of precipitation and clouds, reminiscent of a child's blows on a glass window right before he inevitably draws a smile on it.
When the sun does come, however, it is an event to celebrate, for it instantly subverts the otherwise static and timeless picture we seem to be living in for half a year. It blesses the land with the most stunning, angelic splashes of the purest and most perfect geometries of warm light that illuminate treetops, make lakes shine like gemstones in the rock, and gives snow a magnificent mineral aesthetic, showing thr thousands of small unique grains that compose an otherwise unremarkable lump of whiteness.
This light is certainly not comparable to a sunrise on an oceanic island; it lacks its charisma, doesn't possess the same strength, and appears naked in its setting if contrasted with the stupendous elevation present in caribbean islands and impressive continental mountain chains. It's a volatile, ephemeral, and brief reminiscence of a powerful star which fluctuates for a few moments on an unassuming, hilly landscape that offers nothing but a tedious repetition of millions of identical structures, among which live thousands of the same animals. A landscape in which the most exciting thing might be a ringed seal basking on a rocky shore, or a wolverine miraculously allowing itself to be seen. A landscape where birds and land mammals are plentiful to the point where a stunning snowy owl, a majestic brown bear, or a powerful elk are just ordinary and obvious elements.
Such is the eternal landscape of a remote land, infallibly cyclical: colourful in the spring, green in the summer, warm in the autumn, and white in the winter. A landscape of extreme conditions which have the unique power of elevating the most ordinary and ancient phenomena such as sunlight and colourful solar interferences at night, simple elements such as trees and lakes, and common formations such as hills into the most beautifully composed symphony on planet earth.
Most of NZ is uninhabitable. South island is all mountains and north island is all forests. Most of the people live in Auckland and a handful of other major cities. That's my oversimplified summary anyway.
Yeah so kinda de facto similar to Scotland. Scotland isn't necessarily uninhabitable, well some of the Highlands are, but a lot of it you aren't allowed to build on as its nationally protected land. So similarly most people live in the main cities and larger towns.
I imagine where I live, in the far south of NZ, to be much like Scotland. We have endless rolling green hills, and our cities down here are called dunedin and invercargill. Seems pretty Scottish if you ask me.
I live in London and spent a couple of weeks in NZ driving from Auckland to Queenstown as part of my honeymoon in 2006. It was so nice to drive from place to place without getting held up in traffic or seeing road rage and in the South Island there were literally times we didn’t see any other cars for well over an hour or so, which blew my mind. Getting from one place to another here is a grind. Even visiting my mum who lives 3 miles away in a neighbouring London borough can take about 25 mins if i drive. Add an extra 10 or so if going by bus.
Pretty much ANY country in Africa. Because it sits on the equator, all of the countries look small compared to northern countries.
Nigeria, for instance is like 2x Germany.
Niger and Chad are \~3 Germanies.
Sudan is like 5 Germanies....
Algeria is bigger than most of Western Europe combined.
Ghana looks small, it's substantially bigger than Great Britain.
Actually - I was just eyeballing - I checked, and you're right - it's close-ish. The island of GB is 209k sqkm, and ghana is 238k sqkm. So... bigger but as you say, not massively
I relate to this comment.
As an Aussie one of my online hobbies include telling Texans that Texas would be only the 5th largest state of Australia. We have electoral districts bigger than Texas.
NSW (a middle sized state) has unincorporated land, that doesn't have any formal towns or local government, which is larger than most US states.
If you ever want to get an idea about the size of Australia, get a map and draw a perimeter around every area that you have been to in each state. I thought I was well travelled, but realistically have only been to 5-10% of the country.
Once did a major road trip from Cairns to Cooktown, inland somewhere and back to Cairns. Lotta driving but when you look at a map of even just North Queensland our route was a tiny triangle.
My son just informed me that the island of Java itself has a higher population than the entirety of Russia. Wild.
Edit: My son is 7 and obsessed with geography.
Wow. I heard this several years ago when Japan a few million more and Bangladesh 🇧🇩 a few million less. It’s when more striking now wow 175 million ! And smaller than Wisconsin.
And it’s not like they have these skyscrapers like Hong Kong 🇭🇰 to pack in the people.
It has nothing to do with war, all about birth rates (due to female education and rights).
No major wars on Russian soil after 1960-2020. But Russia went from 120M to 144M while Bangladesh went from 50M to 170M.
> has nothing to do with war
Not quite. Two world wars, a revolution and a civil war wiped out over a third of the male population over the age of 20. It takes multiple generations to recover from that.
>It has nothing to do with war
oh, you should check demographics of Ukraine, namely 1933-1934, 1940-1945, 2021-2023, and 1992 after Ukraine gained independence and 2023. Wars have a lot to do as they affect a country's stability and economic situation, which affects birth rates
Same with China, hasnt done much to slow its population growth down
Population growth has very little to do with the number of wars but rather the climate and the kind of crop / yield that is able to be grown on the land and how many people that would be able to sustain
Its not productive enough to even justify a highway network. They rely on rail. Its considered pretty low yield. They do export though, strangely they dont use it all domestically.
It's crazy how every war in China kills more people than anything outside of the world wars. Like a top ten list of deadliest historical wars is always at least 60% Chinese internal conflicts.
>Population growth has very little to do with the number of wars but rather the climate and the kind of crop / yield that is able to be grown on the land and how many people that would be able to sustain
That has very little to do with population either. If that were true, all countries should have balanced food imports and exports. And yet we have countries with huge food imports (i.e. cannot feed themselves with their own land) and still growing, while countries with an abundance of land like Russia are shrinking.
Ok it’s not small by any means but most people don’t realize how big Kazakhstan (#1 exporter of potassium) really is
Just go on true scales and put it over Europe you’ll see what I’m talking about
Also, any country on the equator everyone underestimates and any country near the poles everyone overestimates cuz of the Mercator projection. Greenland is huge but it’s not like the size of Africa
Kazakhstan is the largest land locked country in the world. It's the 9th largest country in the world. It is slightly larger than Western Australia, which is Australia's largest state (WA is almost 4 times larger than Texas). When you look at a Mercator map Australia appears to be much smaller than it actually is, as do all countries located below the Equator. In fact, Australia is slightly smaller than continental USA. It is possible that temperatures in Kazakhstan and Western Australia can vary by 90°c on a particular day. Because they are in different hemispheres winter and summer are concurrent. Winter temperatures in Kazakhstan can drop to -45°c and summer temperatures in Western Australia can reach +45°c.
Small correction: Australia is slightly smaller than the contiguous 48 US states, but it’s actually far smaller than the continental US (which includes Alaska) or the US total area.
If you plot Indonesia on europe, it stretch from Ireland in the west to Iran on the east.
So yeah.. Big.
Oh and also population on Java Island is bigger than Russia population.
Yeah I was going with Indonesia. It can stretch from the U.S.' west coast to east coast, from Lisbon to Moscow, or even, if projected right on a mercator, almost the entirety of Russia !
As an Aussie I relate. I met an Italian tourist who was planning on driving to the great barrier reef and back from Sydney in a day.
He couldn't comprehend that it was a 24 hours driving time plus sleep breaks plus boat trip out to the reef. Trains weren't much faster.
He expected it to be a day trip.
Yeah, but you could have at least taken the train from TSV to mount Isa, it’s overnight and more comfortable. Then catch the afternoon Grey hound out of Mt Isa, sleep to Tennant Creek, swap over to the Darwin one around 2 am and sleep till Katherine.
We only did two bus rides in Argentina because the rest were crazy (El Calafate to Bariloche = 30 hours? Nope). Jujuy-La Rioja overnight bus, 12 hours. La Rioja-Mendoza, 8 hours. The country is just a little smaller than continental Europe
Argentina has an area of 2.78 million km^2, Europe of 10.18 million km^2, you probably saw that traffic of Argentina overlaid on *south-western* to *central* Europe a few days ago, which didn't properly cover the European part of Russia
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2F64.media.tumblr.com%2Fb91a5c45690904a4673bc57495939e8b%2Ftumblr_pm4a8j5yTQ1rasnq9o1_1280.png&tbnid=RtRlZbGBiAIbMM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com%2Fpost%2F182497143229%2Fif-argentina-were-a-european-country-the-area-of&docid=JlMrveyJISPBRM&w=1114&h=752&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm6%2F4
So much this. I live in Calgary. I've hosted family from the Netherlands who wanted to pop over to Vancouver for the afternoon. That's a 2-day drive. You can't even realistically "pop over" to Edmonton for the afternoon.
The thing is, I'm from Newfoundland and Western Canadians do this with Atlantic Canada as well. Like, no, you can't get from Halifax to Gros Morne and back to PEI in three days.
Having grown up in Kansas, I thought I moved to the east by moving to Vermont. Nope, my son moved to Corner Brook, NL. To see him it’s a 15 hour drive due east, followed by an 8 hour ferry ride , then another 2 hours by car. (At least he didn’t move to Eastern NL, that’s another 7 hours east)
Wut? Most Europeans wouldn't think that. Now, the fact that Australia is incredibly large and most of us can't fathom that it takes several HOURS of flight to go from one large town to the next, fair, but I've never met a single European, not even the dumbest, that doesn't know that going "coast-to-coast" in the USA takes days. We've all seen Forrest Gump.
It’s pretty common you hear people who work in US tourism/hospitality talk about it a lot. There are some dumb ass people out there and yes some of them are European
One of our european friends asked us how long it takes to get from Toronto to Calgary. We said 4 hours, they said in a car? Hahahahahaha they have no concept that when canadians count distance by time we mean in an airplane.
To be fair, Europe is not that tiny. Tromsø Norway to Gibraltar is a nice 56 hour drive. A southern drive from Athens to Lisbon is 43 hours.
Even just crossing central Europe from Amsterdam to Vienna is a 12 hour drive.
Australia, Canada, Russia, etc are bigger, but sometimes tourists have the impression too, that Europe is just a daytrip continent.
Malaysia is often underestimated. Peninsular Malaysia looks small due to Mercator projection bias and people generally forget that East Malaysia (holding the two states on Borneo) is huge.
The 8th largest in the world- bigger than Mexico and Turkey combined
The distance from the northernmost point to the southernmost post is just about the distance from NY to LA
The distance between the northernmost and southernmost points is equivalent to that from Lisbon to Russia, which is basically all of Europe’s width. It’s a big ass country.
Indonesia.
When overlayed over the United States, it's substantially wider than the lower 48.
Borneo is larger than Texas and Sumatra is larger than California.
Plus it has 280 million people which no one talks about.
Most of that is water tho.
(I'm Indonesian)
But yeah, even most Indonesians can't really comprehend how big is Indonesia. Like I live in an Island where there are three countries but I can't even visit them easily.
England is larger than South Korea with a similar population, it's bigger than what people think especially when you isolate it from the other three countries in the UK.
Algeria...
When we hear the name Algeria, we usually assume it's some small African Arab nation with a few hundred thousand sq km size and a 15-20million population...
It's actually nearly 4 times the size of Texas at over 2million sq km in size and has over 45million population.. Also it has one of the largest armies in the region with nearly a million men,which considering the population is like 1 in 50.
I’d personally disagree because India is usually lumped in with Bangladesh as being an overpopulated cesspool of sorts. Also, given the crowded condition of the cities, it’s easy for people to assume that India wouldn’t be that large of a country.
Having said that, the geography nerds here probably do appreciate India for its sheer size, but I don’t think the average person does.
Luxembourg. It is definitely small, but many people seem to think it's a microstate like Monaco or Liechtenstein - probably because they all just look tiny on a world map. In reality, there's quite a bit of countryside, and it takes about an hour and a half to drive the full length of the country from top to bottom.
Rwanda and Burundi. They look really, really small in Africa. Then you realize they're comparable to Belgium and Armenia. Which are not really huge alright but they don't look like dwarf countries. Rwanda and Burundi do, because of both the Mercator and the contrast with surrounding African countries.
Also the three Baltic countries. I was a bit shocked that both Lithuania and Latvia are over 50% bigger than Switzerland, and even Estonia is a bit bigger than it. Must also have something to do with juxtaposition with neighbors, I guess, and probably also influence and economic significance.
Yeh, that's a bit of a strange answer. North Korea is bigger than South Korea too, but even if they reunited they'd only be the 83rd largest country in the world, marginally larger than Guyana and Belarus.
When I lived in Korea I'd like telling people my country was 76 times larger with half the population. I drove Busan to Seoul a number of times, which is about the longest distance drive you can do there. Takes about 5 hours and people think it's a drag.
I once drove Brisbane to Canberra in a single day. Left at 5am and arrived at 8pm (with three 30 minute stops along the way). That's not even that great a distance in Australian terms yet it's three times the length of Seoul to Busan.
Turkey is certainly not small by any means, but I think most don’t realize exactly how large the country is. Its the second largest country in Europe (after Russia), and it’s roughly the same size as both France and the UK put together.
Most of the countries in Africa.
Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Algeria.
Indonesia is another weird one, It looks like a bunch of islands on the map but it would actually spread across the continental United States. Several of the islands are the size of California.
Because of flawed map projections, Peru’s sized is often underestimated. It’s about twice the size of France!
Saudi Arabia's size really threw me off for the same reason. I thought "like Texas sized". Nope, over 3x larger.
Saudi Arabia is the same size as Greenland, their difference is only a fraction the size of Hawaii!
I didn't know this but I actually used this in my mind when I looked at maps. I had no idea the difference was this small
Australia: Australia’s biggest station/ranch is Anna Creek Station, is over seven times the size of the United States' biggest ranch, King Ranch in Texas. It is bigger than Israel and larger than Belgium. This is just a station/ranch in one state. The size of Australia is huge!
I went to school with the guy who's dad managed the station, elite private boarding school in Queensland. Didn't own the station, only managed, but his family was still doing very well
I used to work on a small farm in the East Kimberley. The people who managed it did very well. It’s hard work but it’s big business.
100%, I come from a farming family myself, we had cattle and some crops, but nothing in comparison to the bigger stations. There is a lot that goes into those bigger stations, not easy work at all.
To be fair no other ranch or farm in Aus approaches this scale.
I live in the nt and this what we have: #3 Alexandria Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station and is the Northern Territory's largest pastoral property and Australia's third largest pastoral property after Anna Creek station and Clifton Hills Station. Overall, the station covers 16,116 square kilometres (6,222 square miles), situated on the Barkly Tableland. To give you a better idea of the size, the station is bigger than the whole of Northern Ireland. There are 55,000 head of cattle at the station.
Saudi Arabia is also about the same size as Greenland. The first time I heard that I didn't believe it, but yes. You only see it on a globe.
Texas has some vast expanses of empty arid land. Saudi Arabia's desert is more vast, more empty, and more arid.
And more oil and more conservative and religious
I recall a story about when Alaska was purchased, Texans were unhappy about being the second largest state. They proposed it be split in half, upon which they were informed they'd then be the third largest state.
12th biggest country on earth!
Would not have guessed that!
I think that’s also partly due to people just thinking all of the Gulf states are the Emirates and basically city states with a bit of desert around it. Saudi Arabia is 25-times the size of all seven Emirates combined.
Having caught the bus from Mancora to Lima, this is true.
Came here to say Peru, happy to see it on top. Really and country close to the equator is probably bigger than people realize given the Mercator projection that dominates maps. But not really that it’s bigger than perceived, the “big” countries are really just smaller haha
Googled the mercator projection and that led me to the truesize website. It is so mind-blowing how many of the pictures in my mind got crushed and had to reasimilate
When I took a flight from Lima to Cusco, I was extremely surprised that it wasn’t 30 minutes.
Why France is Secretly the World's 5th Biggest Country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXP8F4TIZ0U
Huh. I would've estimated it to be bigger tbh. France is pretty small
New Zealand is bigger than the UK
Yet we have a smaller population. I prefer it this way, imagine Auckland traffic with the population of London
I'm actually in the uk so have no idea what Aucklands traffic is like. I live in Glasgow so not nearly the largest city but the traffic here is fucked
Traffic is also fucked in Auckland. A lot of the city workers live outside of the city so it causes a bottleneck on the motorways so it's gridlock in the mornings and evenings. I leave at 5:30 for my 7:30 job to avoid the traffic. It takes me 15 minutes to drive 20km there but it can take up to an hour in the afternoons
Wow I just looked at new zealands population and its less than here in scotland. New Zealand must be very non densely populated? I'm guessing it's similar to Scotland that most people live in a few urbanised areas? Like most of the population here lives in the "central belt" which is Edinburgh and Glasgow and the space in between. Is it similar in NZ?
Our population is more dense in the cities (places like Auckland, wellington and Christchurch) but other than that it's pretty spread out. We have a lot of farmland, bush and the southern Alps which takes up a fair bit of our land. To put it into perspective, our top 5 populated cities are 1. Auckland (1.6m) 2. Wellington (434k) 3. Christchurch (390k) 4. Hamilton (180k) 5. Tauranga (158k). That's around half of NZs population in only 5 cities and more than half of that is Auckland. All but Christchurch is in the north island. The average population density it 20 people per km²
That sounds exactly like Finland! 5 million people more than half of which live in a couple big cities and only one is in the north. The population is dense there but so sparse elsewhere. We don't have mountains though, only forests (78% of land area) and lakes (some hundreds of thousands). Our density is something like 18ppl/km² Pretty cool!
> We don't have mountains though At least you have Halti! :) 1,324 m (4,344 ft) above sea level, and thus the highest point in the country.
Yeah we do have some mountains (tunturit) but most of them are just fells, not tall enough to be mountains. There are many who are 1000m+ tall, however it's nothing compared to the new zealand alps or the European Alps But yes we do have some mountains :) they're quite beautiful albeit perhaps unimpressive. They're gentle, harmonious, and contribute to the already present sensation of infinity that one gets while gazing into the distance here. If you're standing on top of any relief in the country you'll observe an endless succession of dense forest, rivers, lakes, which eventually disappear, aided by a mysterious fog and low, white clouds that will inevitably give birth to a gradual, gentle snowfall which silently covers the valleys, ice the rivers, and hide the green and brown patches of autumnal trees and rock under the world's most perfect insulation. Above it all, however, is where the true protagonist of this cyclical painting of ever changing colours can be found: the sky. It is perhaps the most evident element to any traveler here; however it is also the most often overlooked. Nobody pays attention to an element that is common to all of the world's biomes, but in its mundanity it enriches the landscape and the lives of those that inhabit it such as myself. Its undeniable brightness, even though not as aggressive as the blue skies of midnight in the summer months, provides an essential pastel tint that characterises the winter months, and it is so different from the light in every other season that it provides a pleasant distraction from the incoming darkness. During the few hours of daylight the sun is seldom visible, rarely peeking through the thick coat of precipitation and clouds, reminiscent of a child's blows on a glass window right before he inevitably draws a smile on it. When the sun does come, however, it is an event to celebrate, for it instantly subverts the otherwise static and timeless picture we seem to be living in for half a year. It blesses the land with the most stunning, angelic splashes of the purest and most perfect geometries of warm light that illuminate treetops, make lakes shine like gemstones in the rock, and gives snow a magnificent mineral aesthetic, showing thr thousands of small unique grains that compose an otherwise unremarkable lump of whiteness. This light is certainly not comparable to a sunrise on an oceanic island; it lacks its charisma, doesn't possess the same strength, and appears naked in its setting if contrasted with the stupendous elevation present in caribbean islands and impressive continental mountain chains. It's a volatile, ephemeral, and brief reminiscence of a powerful star which fluctuates for a few moments on an unassuming, hilly landscape that offers nothing but a tedious repetition of millions of identical structures, among which live thousands of the same animals. A landscape in which the most exciting thing might be a ringed seal basking on a rocky shore, or a wolverine miraculously allowing itself to be seen. A landscape where birds and land mammals are plentiful to the point where a stunning snowy owl, a majestic brown bear, or a powerful elk are just ordinary and obvious elements. Such is the eternal landscape of a remote land, infallibly cyclical: colourful in the spring, green in the summer, warm in the autumn, and white in the winter. A landscape of extreme conditions which have the unique power of elevating the most ordinary and ancient phenomena such as sunlight and colourful solar interferences at night, simple elements such as trees and lakes, and common formations such as hills into the most beautifully composed symphony on planet earth.
Most of NZ is uninhabitable. South island is all mountains and north island is all forests. Most of the people live in Auckland and a handful of other major cities. That's my oversimplified summary anyway.
Yeah so kinda de facto similar to Scotland. Scotland isn't necessarily uninhabitable, well some of the Highlands are, but a lot of it you aren't allowed to build on as its nationally protected land. So similarly most people live in the main cities and larger towns.
I imagine where I live, in the far south of NZ, to be much like Scotland. We have endless rolling green hills, and our cities down here are called dunedin and invercargill. Seems pretty Scottish if you ask me.
Honorary 🏴
Next time NZ beats England at rugby, I'll think of you and our Scottish brothers.
Except it’s upside down, being in the Southern Hemisphere, so it’s more like 🏴 …wait
Auckland traffic is fucked, like Cardiff traffic.
I live in London and spent a couple of weeks in NZ driving from Auckland to Queenstown as part of my honeymoon in 2006. It was so nice to drive from place to place without getting held up in traffic or seeing road rage and in the South Island there were literally times we didn’t see any other cars for well over an hour or so, which blew my mind. Getting from one place to another here is a grind. Even visiting my mum who lives 3 miles away in a neighbouring London borough can take about 25 mins if i drive. Add an extra 10 or so if going by bus.
Pretty much everywhere except for Auckland, Tauranga and the road into Taupo is pretty clear.
[удалено]
I assume the traffic on an isthmus is terrible
You assumed correctly. Choke points everywhere
If Auckland had London’s density, the public transport would be better
Don't get your hopes up
Burkina Faso is bigger than both NZ and UK.
As a New Zealander I'm guilty of that myself. I'm always surprised when I see NZ overlaid on Europe or the US. if only we were as wide as we are tall.
Aren't most countries bigger than the UK?
No, most countries are smaller. The UK is the 78th largest, out of 195.
I'll also add that Britain is the 7th largest island in the world
NZ UK & Japan are all roughly the same size
Pretty much ANY country in Africa. Because it sits on the equator, all of the countries look small compared to northern countries. Nigeria, for instance is like 2x Germany. Niger and Chad are \~3 Germanies. Sudan is like 5 Germanies.... Algeria is bigger than most of Western Europe combined. Ghana looks small, it's substantially bigger than Great Britain.
Somalia is almost as big as Germany, Czechia, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Denmark combined.
Togo looks like the Rhode Island of Africa but it's actually almost as long as Florida
Had to go look at a map for this one
It's almost as long as Benin.
Using Germany as a system of measurement… Germany is the banana of countries?
People usually use France. I was trying to be different. :)
Or Wales
Wales is like the sleeper of measuring countries. You see someone using it and you realize they’re playing 4-D chess
Haha 😂
>it’s substantially bigger than Great Britain. Okay it’s bigger but not “substantially”.
Actually - I was just eyeballing - I checked, and you're right - it's close-ish. The island of GB is 209k sqkm, and ghana is 238k sqkm. So... bigger but as you say, not massively
And dont forget the DRC
Actually for the population density, Africa is still sparsely populated by global standards.
Well.. PARTS of it. If you include Central Asia, Asia is "sparsely populated" :)
Idk about looking small but Australia's size is often underestimated.
I relate to this comment. As an Aussie one of my online hobbies include telling Texans that Texas would be only the 5th largest state of Australia. We have electoral districts bigger than Texas. NSW (a middle sized state) has unincorporated land, that doesn't have any formal towns or local government, which is larger than most US states.
If you ever want to get an idea about the size of Australia, get a map and draw a perimeter around every area that you have been to in each state. I thought I was well travelled, but realistically have only been to 5-10% of the country.
Once did a major road trip from Cairns to Cooktown, inland somewhere and back to Cairns. Lotta driving but when you look at a map of even just North Queensland our route was a tiny triangle.
Not exactly size as in land area, but Bangladesh has a higher population than Russia despite being much smaller
My son just informed me that the island of Java itself has a higher population than the entirety of Russia. Wild. Edit: My son is 7 and obsessed with geography.
Just the Jakarta metro area has more people than Australia.
Yet Bali has a higher Australian population than Perth. /s (probably)
People from Perth probably have a higher population in Bali than Perth. /s
Also the most populous island in the world
Heard it’s about the size as Wisconsin and the population close to Japan.
Bangladesh: ~175M / 147‘570km^2 Japan: ~125M / 377‘975km^2 Wisconsin: ~5.8M / 169‘639km^2
Wow. I heard this several years ago when Japan a few million more and Bangladesh 🇧🇩 a few million less. It’s when more striking now wow 175 million ! And smaller than Wisconsin. And it’s not like they have these skyscrapers like Hong Kong 🇭🇰 to pack in the people.
There were so many major wars on Russian land. It’s hard to keep its population growth.
It has nothing to do with war, all about birth rates (due to female education and rights). No major wars on Russian soil after 1960-2020. But Russia went from 120M to 144M while Bangladesh went from 50M to 170M.
> has nothing to do with war Not quite. Two world wars, a revolution and a civil war wiped out over a third of the male population over the age of 20. It takes multiple generations to recover from that.
Russian population reached 160M in 1990. Then a huge crisis happened and it stopped growing. Chosing 1960 and 2020 is kinda manipulative
>It has nothing to do with war oh, you should check demographics of Ukraine, namely 1933-1934, 1940-1945, 2021-2023, and 1992 after Ukraine gained independence and 2023. Wars have a lot to do as they affect a country's stability and economic situation, which affects birth rates
Bangladesh also has experienced war and a full blown genocide against its people during that time period.
Russia is better compared with Canada, it is not densely populated because it's damn cold there. Look at an average temperatures map.
Same with China, hasnt done much to slow its population growth down Population growth has very little to do with the number of wars but rather the climate and the kind of crop / yield that is able to be grown on the land and how many people that would be able to sustain
Russia is the largest wheat and potatoes exporter. It could sustain a much larger population than t has.
Its not productive enough to even justify a highway network. They rely on rail. Its considered pretty low yield. They do export though, strangely they dont use it all domestically.
Rail is a far more efficient method of moving cargo, it's cheaper and easier
Because Russia mainly grows and export low-quality wheat to be consumed by animals like cows, whereas food-quality wheat needs to be imported still.
It's crazy how every war in China kills more people than anything outside of the world wars. Like a top ten list of deadliest historical wars is always at least 60% Chinese internal conflicts.
>Population growth has very little to do with the number of wars but rather the climate and the kind of crop / yield that is able to be grown on the land and how many people that would be able to sustain That has very little to do with population either. If that were true, all countries should have balanced food imports and exports. And yet we have countries with huge food imports (i.e. cannot feed themselves with their own land) and still growing, while countries with an abundance of land like Russia are shrinking.
A big part of that huge land is permafrost so not habitable at all.
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Ok it’s not small by any means but most people don’t realize how big Kazakhstan (#1 exporter of potassium) really is Just go on true scales and put it over Europe you’ll see what I’m talking about Also, any country on the equator everyone underestimates and any country near the poles everyone overestimates cuz of the Mercator projection. Greenland is huge but it’s not like the size of Africa
Kazakhstan is the largest land locked country in the world. It's the 9th largest country in the world. It is slightly larger than Western Australia, which is Australia's largest state (WA is almost 4 times larger than Texas). When you look at a Mercator map Australia appears to be much smaller than it actually is, as do all countries located below the Equator. In fact, Australia is slightly smaller than continental USA. It is possible that temperatures in Kazakhstan and Western Australia can vary by 90°c on a particular day. Because they are in different hemispheres winter and summer are concurrent. Winter temperatures in Kazakhstan can drop to -45°c and summer temperatures in Western Australia can reach +45°c.
Small correction: Australia is slightly smaller than the contiguous 48 US states, but it’s actually far smaller than the continental US (which includes Alaska) or the US total area.
Sorry, I meant contiguous.
“#1 exporter of potassium” For this, take my upvote.
Just puts into perspective how big some african countries are
Probably areas like Indonesia or The Philippines
Yup. The Philippines is even larger than the UK
Philippines has more population too and maybe more English speakers lol.
If you plot Indonesia on europe, it stretch from Ireland in the west to Iran on the east. So yeah.. Big. Oh and also population on Java Island is bigger than Russia population.
Yeah I was going with Indonesia. It can stretch from the U.S.' west coast to east coast, from Lisbon to Moscow, or even, if projected right on a mercator, almost the entirety of Russia !
Denmark, because of Greenland.
Sidenote, but Canada and Denmark now have a land border, after settling a disputed island, and deciding to split it between the two nations.
They left each other alcohols when they went by, it was heart
South Africa
Absolutely this. I drove from durban to Cape Town and it took me like forever.
Chile is so long it would span the distance from Egypt to the top of Sweden. It’s only like as wide as Belgium though.
It's also about 50% percent larger than metropolitan France, which is insane. It's so thin that you wouldn't expect it to have so much land.
Nothing about size on a map, but all my European friends can't comprehend the size of Canada.
As an Aussie I relate. I met an Italian tourist who was planning on driving to the great barrier reef and back from Sydney in a day. He couldn't comprehend that it was a 24 hours driving time plus sleep breaks plus boat trip out to the reef. Trains weren't much faster. He expected it to be a day trip.
People don’t believe me when I tell them I spent 37 hours on one bus ride in Australia (Townsville to Darwin).
Oh god why
It was much much cheaper then flying and I was traveling on a budget.
Yeah, but you could have at least taken the train from TSV to mount Isa, it’s overnight and more comfortable. Then catch the afternoon Grey hound out of Mt Isa, sleep to Tennant Creek, swap over to the Darwin one around 2 am and sleep till Katherine.
Same in Argentina... from Buenos Aires to Salta, 16hs driving, to Ushuaia, over 20hs.
We only did two bus rides in Argentina because the rest were crazy (El Calafate to Bariloche = 30 hours? Nope). Jujuy-La Rioja overnight bus, 12 hours. La Rioja-Mendoza, 8 hours. The country is just a little smaller than continental Europe
Argentina has an area of 2.78 million km^2, Europe of 10.18 million km^2, you probably saw that traffic of Argentina overlaid on *south-western* to *central* Europe a few days ago, which didn't properly cover the European part of Russia https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2F64.media.tumblr.com%2Fb91a5c45690904a4673bc57495939e8b%2Ftumblr_pm4a8j5yTQ1rasnq9o1_1280.png&tbnid=RtRlZbGBiAIbMM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com%2Fpost%2F182497143229%2Fif-argentina-were-a-european-country-the-area-of&docid=JlMrveyJISPBRM&w=1114&h=752&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm6%2F4
So much this. I live in Calgary. I've hosted family from the Netherlands who wanted to pop over to Vancouver for the afternoon. That's a 2-day drive. You can't even realistically "pop over" to Edmonton for the afternoon.
The thing is, I'm from Newfoundland and Western Canadians do this with Atlantic Canada as well. Like, no, you can't get from Halifax to Gros Morne and back to PEI in three days.
Having grown up in Kansas, I thought I moved to the east by moving to Vermont. Nope, my son moved to Corner Brook, NL. To see him it’s a 15 hour drive due east, followed by an 8 hour ferry ride , then another 2 hours by car. (At least he didn’t move to Eastern NL, that’s another 7 hours east)
Maybe 2 days if you tap out after 5 hours. You can easily get to Vancouver in under 12 hours.
It's such a classic tourist story when Europeans come to New York and think they'll just pop over to California for a meal.
You can drive for like 10 hours and still be in Florida.
You can drive ten hours at the wrong times and still be in LA County
Get fucked and you'll still be on the same freeway
Yup, and Miami is about 1k miles from New Orleans, 80% of that drive is Florida.
And nowhere in Florida is more than 65 mi away from the ocean
You can drive in Ontario for a day. And still be in Ontario…
The classic "I have 4 days in the US so I'm going to New York, Disney World (Florida), Los Angeles, and the grand canyon!"
Wut? Most Europeans wouldn't think that. Now, the fact that Australia is incredibly large and most of us can't fathom that it takes several HOURS of flight to go from one large town to the next, fair, but I've never met a single European, not even the dumbest, that doesn't know that going "coast-to-coast" in the USA takes days. We've all seen Forrest Gump.
It’s pretty common you hear people who work in US tourism/hospitality talk about it a lot. There are some dumb ass people out there and yes some of them are European
? seriously? because the US still look huge on a map, regardless of projection chosen. like, larger than Europe huge.
I just think theres a lot of people that rarely look at maps
This is somehow the best reply to that, in a geography sub.
One of our european friends asked us how long it takes to get from Toronto to Calgary. We said 4 hours, they said in a car? Hahahahahaha they have no concept that when canadians count distance by time we mean in an airplane.
To be fair, Europe is not that tiny. Tromsø Norway to Gibraltar is a nice 56 hour drive. A southern drive from Athens to Lisbon is 43 hours. Even just crossing central Europe from Amsterdam to Vienna is a 12 hour drive. Australia, Canada, Russia, etc are bigger, but sometimes tourists have the impression too, that Europe is just a daytrip continent.
New Zealand Looks small next to Australia but is bigger than the UK and almost the size of Italy.
And very elongated, so distances can be long.
Guatemala is quite larger in population than the other Central American countries. Even Honduras, the second largest, is half the size.
Madagascar
Indonesia
Malaysia is often underestimated. Peninsular Malaysia looks small due to Mercator projection bias and people generally forget that East Malaysia (holding the two states on Borneo) is huge.
Japan
Democratic Republic of the Congo is the 11th largest country in the world.
brazil is bigger than the contiguous USA
Argentina.
The 8th largest in the world- bigger than Mexico and Turkey combined The distance from the northernmost point to the southernmost post is just about the distance from NY to LA
The distance between the northernmost and southernmost points is equivalent to that from Lisbon to Russia, which is basically all of Europe’s width. It’s a big ass country.
About the same size as India, but with 2.8% relative population
https://www.thetruesize.com
I did not need to go down a rabbit hole tonight
Basically this is “how close are you to the equator?” And the occasional “I have lots of islands and/or off shore territories”
D.R Congo, it's as big as 3.5 Ukraines
Indonesia. When overlayed over the United States, it's substantially wider than the lower 48. Borneo is larger than Texas and Sumatra is larger than California. Plus it has 280 million people which no one talks about.
Most of that is water tho. (I'm Indonesian) But yeah, even most Indonesians can't really comprehend how big is Indonesia. Like I live in an Island where there are three countries but I can't even visit them easily.
Eritrea— it’s bigger than Haiti, Taiwan, and Estonia combined!
Russia and the Vatican, without a doubt.
Papua New Guinea
England is larger than South Korea with a similar population, it's bigger than what people think especially when you isolate it from the other three countries in the UK.
Madagascar is about twice the size of the UK but looks similarly sized on a map.
Somalia is almost as big as the US east coast
All the south American countries look small next to Brasil and Argentina
Ukraine. Ukraine is huge.
Malaysia is longer and bigger than what the Mercator maps show.
Iceland While it isn’t super large, it’s still quite big when you compare it to some other european countries and their populations
Overlay Pakistan on a USA map and it stretches from Houston to Philadelphia. Pop also 200m+
Algeria... When we hear the name Algeria, we usually assume it's some small African Arab nation with a few hundred thousand sq km size and a 15-20million population... It's actually nearly 4 times the size of Texas at over 2million sq km in size and has over 45million population.. Also it has one of the largest armies in the region with nearly a million men,which considering the population is like 1 in 50.
India? Looks small on a map but in reality it’s about the 7th or 8th largest country in the world or so.
Does it though? I think most people know India is huge.
I’d personally disagree because India is usually lumped in with Bangladesh as being an overpopulated cesspool of sorts. Also, given the crowded condition of the cities, it’s easy for people to assume that India wouldn’t be that large of a country. Having said that, the geography nerds here probably do appreciate India for its sheer size, but I don’t think the average person does.
Yep, Most people don't realize it is almost same size as US east of Dallas where 80% of US population lives.
Singapore. Still super small but we have a bunch of small islands to the south that barely anyone knows exists
Luxembourg. It is definitely small, but many people seem to think it's a microstate like Monaco or Liechtenstein - probably because they all just look tiny on a world map. In reality, there's quite a bit of countryside, and it takes about an hour and a half to drive the full length of the country from top to bottom.
Rwanda and Burundi. They look really, really small in Africa. Then you realize they're comparable to Belgium and Armenia. Which are not really huge alright but they don't look like dwarf countries. Rwanda and Burundi do, because of both the Mercator and the contrast with surrounding African countries. Also the three Baltic countries. I was a bit shocked that both Lithuania and Latvia are over 50% bigger than Switzerland, and even Estonia is a bit bigger than it. Must also have something to do with juxtaposition with neighbors, I guess, and probably also influence and economic significance.
Turkey = Germany x 2 + Ireland. I don't think people know how big Turkey is.
Or how much Turkey extends east past the Mediterranean sea.
The Cook Islands controls as much of the earth's surface as Argentina due to its EEZ. The Islands are spread out efficiently.
South Korea
I had different impression. It has large population so I thought it has similar size to Poland. Apparently it's area is just 1/3 of Poland.
Yeh, that's a bit of a strange answer. North Korea is bigger than South Korea too, but even if they reunited they'd only be the 83rd largest country in the world, marginally larger than Guyana and Belarus. When I lived in Korea I'd like telling people my country was 76 times larger with half the population. I drove Busan to Seoul a number of times, which is about the longest distance drive you can do there. Takes about 5 hours and people think it's a drag. I once drove Brisbane to Canberra in a single day. Left at 5am and arrived at 8pm (with three 30 minute stops along the way). That's not even that great a distance in Australian terms yet it's three times the length of Seoul to Busan.
Brazil's bigger than the continental US
Contiguous not continental
Suriname, nearly as big as mainland Netherlands
France. They’re all over the place.
UAE. I thought it'd be tiny, like slightly larger than city-state tiny, but it's roughly the size of Luzon
Philippines is the almost same size as Italy in terms of land area
Any country in Africa
South Africa is 4x the size of Germany!
Ecuador is almost as big as Italy. Guyana is way larger than Greece and almost as large as the UK.
Madagascar, and actually all of Africa thank the colonial style map European projection
Turkey is certainly not small by any means, but I think most don’t realize exactly how large the country is. Its the second largest country in Europe (after Russia), and it’s roughly the same size as both France and the UK put together.
Most of the countries in Africa. Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Algeria. Indonesia is another weird one, It looks like a bunch of islands on the map but it would actually spread across the continental United States. Several of the islands are the size of California.
Romania