Great big bits of empty

[lederhosen]

Probably of interest only to a very few on my f-list (if anybody), but: a while back I talked about the 'remoteness' classifications we use for places Australia. The method used to determine those classifications is a bit complicated, based on road distance to townships etc. of various size; see here if you want the gory details.

But the short version is: if you live in or near a city of at least 250,000 people, you're RA 0 ('Major Cities of Australia'). And even if the largest nearby town is only 5,000 people, you're no worse than RA 3 ('Remote Australia').

Here is a map of what Australia looks like, rated on that scale. Those tiny red bits you can barely see, on a few spots around the coast? That's where more than half of the Australian population lives.

The big white bit that covers most of the map... well, you probably wouldn't want your car to break down in there.

Comments

[chaos-crafter.livejournal.com]

I don't think your link goes where you think it goes.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Oops. Fixed now, I think.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

I had a similar map, set up in concentric quarter-circles or thereabouts. The smallest, in the south-east and just encompassing Adelaide & Brisbane IIRC, accounted for ~70% of the population. It was...effective as a reminder of just how empty much of this country is.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Oooo, so much white space to hide the bodies!

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, my folks probably didn't even go that far out and felt a bit insecure since they're used to rural service stations every handful of kilometres. They should have thought about it like driving into Algonquin Park; "Attention: You had better have gas past this point because you're not going to get it for a while!"