Webs, Weeds and Wisdom: The true size of Australia

By Kate Walker
Updated June 19 2018 - 10:58am, first published 9:10am

It took Peter and I nearly five hours to fly from Canberra to Perth some weeks ago. That’s a distance of 3657 kilometres or roughly 38 hours of driving. Distance isn’t something I get hung up over; most country people don’t. We’re use to driving roughly an hour to get to the next place. Yet, even so, it did surprise me that Perth was so far away. It’s one thing to be told Australia is a big country but to understand what “big” means, I had to experience it. Flying continuously for five hours taking a straight line over the Bight, together with the Google fact that our country is almost as wide as it is long, emphasised the meaning of “big country”.

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