And that the country was happy with a much higher death rate. Sweden has less than half the population of Australia and they have had 5,667 deaths and Australia has had 128.
When Australia went into the first lockdown they had essentially no community transmission.
It is unclear that the lockdowns had any impact at all.
Now that there is significant community transmission in Melbourne we can see if the second lockdown is effective.
Sydney and Melbourne are much like any other large city in the world and, at around five million people each, combined they represent ~40% of the country's population.
The early success Australia saw in dealing with this pandemic had nothing to do with sparse population.