new world map
Australia is dealing with a minor body-image crisis after a new world map showed the continent at its true proportions for the first time in four and a half centuries.
The United Nations General Assembly voted last week to encourage wider use of the Equal Earth projection, which preserves the relative size of land masses far more accurately than the Mercator projection. The vote passed 164 to one. The Mercator, designed in 1569 for navigation, has spent the intervening centuries giving several parts of the world a fairly generous portrayal.
Australia, unfortunately, was not one of them. The Equal Earth version gives the country considerably more visual heft, and the effect has been described within the government as confronting. Canberra’s initial position was that the image had been stretched during uploading.
Officials have since stressed that the continent remains roughly 7.7 million square kilometres and has not “let itself go”. The change has been attributed variously to posture, lighting and a modest amount of water weight, with officials gesturing broadly at the Indian and Pacific oceans. Geographers have observed that this is not what doctors mean by fluid retention. Canberra says it remains open to constructive feedback but notes that this is precisely the sort of unsolicited commentary that creates body-image problems in the first place.
The revised map has also given Australians a more confronting view of something they have historically enjoyed telling foreigners, which is that Australia is bloody huge.
For decades, this has been a reliable source of national pride. A visitor proposes driving from Melbourne to Uluru after lunch, giving an Australian a welcome opportunity to explain that Europe is essentially a collection of suburbs. Australians have been less enthusiastic about having the scale explained back to them.
Western Australians, however, have welcomed the clarification. Sydney to Perth has not become any farther, but it now looks considerably more like Sydney to Perth. This offers some vindication after years of watching east-coast friends fly nine hours to Tokyo without complaint and then describe Perth as “a bit of a trek”. Qantas has confirmed that the kilometre count is unchanged and declined to say whether the increased appearance of distance may eventually attract a surcharge.
Mercator, Australia insists, simply “knew its angles”. Officials prefer the term “reprojected” to “enlarged”, which they say carries an unnecessarily judgemental tone, and have asked that any discussion of the country’s dimensions acknowledge that it has had a lot on its plate.
Attention has naturally turned to Greenland, which has emerged from the same correction looking dramatically slimmer. The island has rejected persistent rumours of using Ozempic, attributing one of the most spectacular apparent weight-loss transformations in cartographic history to ice baths. It adds that Mercator was always “a bit too into its curves.”
Unfortunately, the Greenland method appears difficult to replicate locally and Australian health insurers are not expected to cover it. Several Bondi wellness clinics are understood to be assembling a Greenland Reset regardless, combining lymphatic drainage, chlorophyll water and having your photograph taken substantially closer to the poles. Practitioners advise that results may vary depending on latitude.
Having established that Australia has rather more visual acreage than previously appreciated, the question is now whether Australians might consider using any of it. UN Officials queried whether the population might consider moving slightly inward rather than remaining concentrated around the coast like droplets condensed on the outside of a schooner.
Australia has rejected the characterisation, “yeah, nah”. “Anyone keen to spend an arvo out the back o’ Bourke is welcome to it, but we prefer it at the beach, circling for a park.”
The property industry, meanwhile, sees opportunity. Agents have praised Equal Earth for making the continent present significantly larger, an improvement normally requiring mirrors, an open-plan renovation and a wide-angle lens. Analysts stressed that no new land has been created, but Australian property values have survived weaker reasons for going up.
For now, Canberra says Australians should avoid unhealthy comparisons and learn to accept the country as it actually is. Australia remains large, stable and comfortable with its dimensions, and there is no shame in taking up a little more room on the map.
It has simply asked whether future copies of Equal Earth could be printed in black and would prefer Mercator be used for Profile pictures.
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