Regional Australia

Australia is both large and small, in local and global terms. Australia’s land area is similar to that of Brazil, a country with a population more than eight times the size of our own. Our island continent spans an area that is equivalent to more than twenty-five European countries, from Ireland to Ukraine and from Spain and Turkey to the south of Finland, yet 60 percent of our population lives in the five major capital cities of more than one million people. Across Australia there are fewer than twenty cities with populations of more than 100,000 people, which is the limit of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ definition of major urban centres. Beyond these centres there are hundreds of regional towns with smaller populations, many of which are geographically disconnected from major cities but central to the national economy. Some estimates wager that regional Australia accounts for around 40 percent of national economic output.