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| Australia outline superimposed on Europe |
Yeah, I was surprised when I looked at
this map overlay. Australia is way bigger than England or France or Germany, bigger than Europe.
In fact, Australia—2.97 million square
miles—is just about exactly the same size as the continental United States. Who
knew?
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| Mollweide projection with true proportional land areas |
By the way, “down under” is a
colloquial nickname for Australia and New Zealand because those countries are
below the equator, and thus cartographically “under” the western European
countries, like Great Britain that colonized both Australia and New Zealand in
the 1770s.
Notice that I didn’t say “discovered”
Australia and New Zealand….the Maori peoples settled in New Zealand more than
1,000 years before the British arrived, and the Australian Aborigines have the
oldest continuous human culture in the world.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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