Is Australia really empty?
Australia has about 9 people per square mile, one of the lowest averages of any country. But that average describes a place almost no Australian lives. Most of them live somewhere very crowded.
The average vs. where Australians actually live
Australia's land and people, split by how crowded each spot is
Each bar is 100%. The same colors mean the same crowdedness in both bars.
↑ The darkest slice, where 74% of Australians live, is 0.1% of the land, too thin to see.
Only 2% of Australians live in the lightly settled 3% of the land, and none in the empty 96%.
An average spreads the people evenly over the land, but people don't spread out evenly. Australia's 9 people per square mile counts the empty outback as if people lived there. Ask instead how crowded it is where the typical Australian lives, and the answer is over 5,000 per square mile.
An average can describe a place where almost no one is. Before trusting one, ask what it was averaged over.
What other average describes something almost no one actually experiences?
See the numbers behind the bars
| People per sq mi | Land | Share of land | People | Share of people |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,500 or more | 3,400 sq mi (8,800 km²) | 0.1% | 20.0M | 73.7% |
| 250 to 2,500 | 5,700 sq mi (14,900 km²) | 0.2% | 5.2M | 19.1% |
| 25 to 250 | 17,800 sq mi (46,000 km²) | 0.6% | 1.3M | 4.8% |
| Under 25 | 83,100 sq mi (215,300 km²) | 2.8% | 0.6M | 2.3% |
| No one | 2,860,300 sq mi (7,408,100 km²) | 96.3% | 0 | 0% |
| All of Australia | 2,970,400 sq mi (7,693,200 km²) | 100% | 27.2M | 100% |
How we counted. The Australian Bureau of Statistics splits the whole country into squares 1 kilometer on a side (about 0.39 sq mi each) and estimates how many people live in each one. Each square is sorted by how crowded it is, then its land and its people are added to that group. "The typical Australian" is the median: half of all Australians live in squares at least that crowded. Weighting every square by its number of residents gives a similar answer, about 6,200 people per sq mi (2,400 per km²). The grid is modeled from mid-2024 population estimates, so small squares can be off, but the overall pattern is not.
Explore more about where people actually live
How Big Is a State Without Its Biggest City? shows how much of a state's population can sit in one metro area, Density Extremes shows how much of the U.S. has almost no one in it, and Half of the World Lives Here shows the same pattern for the whole planet.
Related exhibits
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian population grid 2024 (1 km grid cells modeled from June 2024 estimated resident population by SA1), via the Digital Atlas of Australia; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Regional population, 2024–25 (national density of 3.6 people per km² at June 2025); U.S. Census Bureau, state area measurements (Rhode Island, 1,545 sq mi total area).