People, not land
A map of Australia is a map of land, and almost none of that land is where Australians live. Turn the land into people: every region shrinks or swells into a circle whose area is the number of people living in it.
Loading ABS boundaries and population…
People per km²
People view
area is people, at one scale
Each shape is an Australian Bureau of Statistics area, and its circle has an area proportional to its estimated resident population at 30 June 2025[1]. Colour is people per square kilometre and stays with the shape as it changes. Circles are pushed apart until none overlap, so on the people view a place sits near its true position, not on it. The faint outline is the continent the regions leave behind. Hover or tap for figures; pinch, or hold Ctrl/⌘ and scroll, to zoom.
How Concentrated
The Bureau models where residents live on a grid of one-kilometre squares[2]. Rank all 7,693,195 squares of land from most crowded to least, then count down from the top until you have half the population.
The answer depends on the size of the unit you count with. On two-kilometre squares, nine in ten people need 0.31% of the land rather than 0.24%. Count in suburb-sized statistical areas instead and the same country reads as 98.8% of the land holding 7.6% of the people, at fewer than ten people per square kilometre[1]. Those areas are drawn to hold similar numbers of people, not similar amounts of land, so in the interior they are enormous: the largest, Outback in South Australia, is 513,391 km² — more than twice the size of Victoria — and home to 1,939 people. The finer the unit, the smaller the footprint. The headline figures use the kilometre grid because it is the finest the Bureau publishes with these estimates.
At the other end, the Melbourne CBD - North area is settled at a rate of about 43,300 people per square kilometre, and the eight greater capital city areas hold 68% of the country on 0.7% of its land. Spread evenly, Australia would have 3.6 people per square kilometre. Almost nowhere looks like that.
Why This Map Is Here
The five corridor options on this site run through the part of the map that vanishes. That is the argument for an inland corridor, and it is the hardest thing about one.
The argument first. Solar at this scale needs land in quantities the coast does not have spare, under the best sun in the country. The Case assumes a gross footprint of ~2,400 km² at full build[4] — fragmented along whichever alignment is eventually chosen, contingent on Traditional Owner consent, and smaller than the land that half the country already lives on. The resource and the room are in the same place.
Then the constraint. Few people means little local demand, no standing workforce, no housing, and long supply lines. Power generated in the interior has to be used in the interior or carried to where the circles are, and on the numbers in The Case the carrying gives the cost advantage away. That is why the case rests on loads that can move to the power, compute and processing, rather than on power delivered to the coast. It is also why workforce and housing sit on the constraints register and not in a footnote.
By State and Territory
The same comparison as text. Western Australia and the Northern Territory are 50% of the land and 12% of the people.
| State or territory | People | Share of people | Share of land | People per km² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 8,592,524 | 31.1% | 10.4% | 11 |
| Victoria | 7,073,859 | 25.6% | 3.0% | 31 |
| Queensland | 5,669,764 | 20.5% | 22.5% | 3.3 |
| Western Australia | 3,044,382 | 11.0% | 32.9% | 1.2 |
| South Australia | 1,902,665 | 6.9% | 12.8% | 1.9 |
| Tasmania | 576,261 | 2.1% | 0.9% | 8.5 |
| Australian Capital Territory | 484,630 | 1.8% | <0.1% | 206 |
| Northern Territory | 264,556 | 1.0% | 17.5% | 0.2 |
| Other Territories | 5,013 | <0.1% | <0.1% | 20 |
How It Is Built
- The shapes are the Bureau’s Statistical Areas Level 2 (SA2): suburb-sized in the cities, vast in the interior[3]. Borders are simplified to 500 metres with shared borders kept shared, and drawn on an equal-area projection, so a square kilometre is the same size everywhere on the land view.
- The people are the Bureau’s estimated resident population (ERP) at 30 June 2025, by SA2. The 2025 estimates are preliminary and will be revised. They sum to the national total of 27,613,654 and to every state total; the build stops if they do not.
- Each area gets a circle whose area is proportional to its people, at one scale across all three views. The circle starts at the population-weighted centre of the area, taken from the kilometre grid, so a desert region’s circle starts at its town and not at its geometric middle.
- Circles are pushed apart until none overlap; larger circles move less. In the most detailed view the typical circle ends up about 59 km from where it started and the most displaced 289 km. The people view shows roughly where, not exactly where.
- Regions (SA4) and states are the same areas merged upward, so the three views always agree.
- Colour is people per square kilometre of the whole area, parks and paddocks included. It describes the shape on the land view and travels with it.
Limits
Lord Howe Island, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island sit outside the frame and are not drawn. Their 5,150 people are counted in every figure on this page. The regions and states views also leave off Jervis Bay, which the Bureau groups with Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island as Other Territories.
34 areas have no residents: national parks, airports, industrial estates. They appear on the land view and vanish on the people view, which is the correct answer. Islands and other detached parts of an area fold into its single circle.
The corridor lines are schematic centrelines between candidate nodes, the same five shown on the map. They are not surveyed routes and not a claim on land. On the people view they are drawn against the outline of the continent, not against the displaced circles.
Credit
Dissolving a map of land into circles sized by people is Karim Douïeb’s idea; his animation of United States election results carried the line “Land doesn’t vote. People do.” The sequence used here follows David Zumbach’s Swiss version, votemapswitzerland, by way of Hayley Pring’s build for the 2022 Victorian state election, whose MIT-licensed code this page adapts. The national pipeline, the density colouring and any errors are this site’s. Data © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics), CC BY 4.0.
Sources
- ABS, Regional population, 2024–25 — population estimates and components by SA2, 2026-03. link Accessed 2026-09. Estimated resident population at 30 June 2025 by Statistical Area Level 2. The 2025 estimates are preliminary and will be revised. CC BY 4.0. Re-run scripts/population when the 2025–26 release lands (due 25 March 2027).
- ABS, Australian population grid 2025 — Regional population, 2024–25, data downloads, 2026-03. link Accessed 2026-09. Modelled: SA1 population spread across residential address points, summed to 1 km² cells; the ABS says to interpret with caution. The concentration figures on /population (share of land holding half, and nine in ten, of the people) are TASC's calculation from this grid, not ABS statistics. Method at /population#method. CC BY 4.0.
- ABS, Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3 — digital boundary files, Statistical Areas Level 2, 2021-07. link Accessed 2026-09. Boundaries and official areas (km²) for the /population map. Edition 3 is the geography the 2024–25 population estimates are published on. CC BY 4.0.
- TASC (this site), Corridor cost model — assumptions and workings, 2026-08. link Accessed 2026-08. TASC's own estimate. Assumptions published at /assumptions; challenge invited via /contact.