Australia 🇦🇺

Australia is a sovereign country in Australia and New Zealand, in the wider region of Oceania. Treaties and official documents call it Commonwealth of Australia. Government sits in Canberra.

It covers 7,692,024 km², which ranks it 7th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Brazil and just ahead of India. That makes it a fraction smaller than Brazil.

The population is about 27.2 million, placing it 54th of 249 by population — between Venezuela above it and Niger below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 5 in size and 1st in population.

Australia has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Timor-Leste, roughly 2,200 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. Timor-Leste and Indonesia sit in a different world region from Australia yet rank among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Australia's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Its reference point sits at 27.0° south and 133.0° east, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 3,006 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

The Tropic of Capricorn passes across it. Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include South Africa, Eswatini and the Pitcairn Islands.

There is no land frontier at all — every boundary it has is a coastline. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 3.5 people per square kilometre, which makes it very thinly populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Australian, so residents are Australians.

The one official language is English. Another 90 entries list English too — among them American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and the Bahamas.

Against Oceania as a whole it is the 1st most populous of 27 entries, and it accounts for 84% of everyone living in Australia and New Zealand.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Australia ranks 7th of 249 by area and 54th by population. That works out at 5.1% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.33% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Australia in the size ordering are Brazil at 8,515,767 km² and India at 3,287,590 km², against Australia's 7,692,024 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Australia averages 4 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it among the emptiest places on the list — 238th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Australia does not have the Australian dollar to itself. It is one of 7 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is AUD, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in AUD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Australia among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Australian dollar ($, AUD). It is issued for Australia alone.

The top-level domain is .au. The international dialling code is +61. In ISO terms it is au in two letters and AUS in three.

Canberra is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Australia is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

Within Australia and New Zealand, Australia is the most populous of the 5 entries this site lists, and the largest by area as well. New Zealand is next in line by population.

Every entry in Australia and New Zealand has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, New Zealand is the place to carry on.

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand
• 🇦🇺 Australia