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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

Australia is 7.69 million square km, and the 6th largest country in the world. That makes it 80.7% as big as the US (inc. Alaska) and 77% as big as Canada. Like Canada, as massive percentage of people live in a tiny amount of the landmass. For Australia it's about 95% of people in 5% of the landmass.

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Why didn’t Australians settle in the closest points to Britain? Why sail all the way to the other side?

It was a continent-sized jail ; you keep your baddest of asses as far from you as possible

The climate and farming land are a lot more favourable in the South/East. But in honesty like most people "discovering" land, they just happened to bump into the continent where they did and set up shop.

The latter part isn't really true in this case, the east coast was the last part of the continent to be discovered by Europeans.

The west and north had been explored and mapped centuries earlier by various explorers (Hartog, Tasman, Dampier) but it wasn't until Cook discovered the more agriculture-friendly south-east coast that the idea of colonisation started to seem worthwhile; just eighteen years later we had Sydney.

I don't know if the discovery and use of the Roaring Forties predates or postdates Australian settlement, but in the Age of Sail, you need to sail south of Cape of Good Hope, which puts you in a strong westward wind belt known as the Roaring Forties, which will spit you out on the southern coast of Australia, with the southeast being the easiest to reach (because it's the most southern one). So in terms of sailing time, it's easier to get to southern than northern Australia.

You may need to read more about Australian history, people were sent their from England if they committed a crime like stealing a silk handkerchief.

One example given below

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Thackery

Historically sea and ocean navigation was coastal or as close to coasts as possible, plus influenced by winds and ocean currents. I imagine that going "straight" towards Perth was harder and less intuitive at the time that hopping near Asia and then through Indonesia and then over the Australian East Coast.

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