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| Bad Map Projection: The United Stralia |
 Title text: This projection distorts both area and direction, but preserves Melbourne. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a GIANT AUSTRALICAN SPIDERIGATOR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
This is the eighth comic in the series of Bad Map Projections displaying Bad Map Projection #102: The United Stralia. It follows #45: Exterior Kansas, released about three and a half months earlier. In this addition to the Bad Map Projections series, Randall has blended two different countries — the United States of America and Australia — into one.
As with a number of Bad Map Projections, the primary joke is the naming of this as a "map projection". Its depiction is particularly similar to 2807: Bad Map Projection: ABS(Longitude), in which geography is overlaid upon other geography. It also follows the practice of 2256: Bad Map Projection: South America, in which a general continental shape is forced upon other areas, with the general geographical outline of the 48 contiguous US states being merged with the political boundaries of Australia (with exceptions, most obviously Australia's Bass Strait being retained in lieu of the US's central Florida). At a further level of merging, the US states are repacked as subdivisions within the various Australian ones; as with the likes of 2394: Contiguous 41 States, it also takes some liberties with the relative neighboring positioning of some of these, although not by totally removing any of the actual contiguous United States in this instance. Alaska and Hawaii aren't included, likely because the 48 contiguous US states better match the shape and size of Australia as well as Australia having no such equivalents.
The map pokes fun at superficial and irrelevant similarities between features of the maps of the United States and Australia, such as the shape of the east coasts of New England and the Cape York Peninsula, and the distance to the southern tip of island of Tazmania and the length of the Florida peninsula. The end result is to illustrate a fanciful place which does not actually exist and thus would have limited worth for navigating either Australia or the USA, although navigation between two listed locations/areas drawn from the same original continent would at least be broadly possible (with the possibility of a few 'surprises' en route). The blending features cities from both countries on the map, e.g., San Francisco and Los Angeles (USA) close to Perth (Australia).
The states and territories of Australia are depicted with black lines/labels, while the states of the United States and such cities as are taken from either nation are marked with gray. The Australian states are labeled with their full names, but the American states are given only their postal abbreviations. (Mississippi is mislabeled as MI, in addition to Michigan's own correct usage, instead of the official MS.) Western Australia is usually abbreviated to WA, but the convention here leaves that unambiguously assigned to the US state of Washington. Idaho, for some reason, is not labeled at all, and neither is the Australian island state of Tasmania.
The title text makes a joke that this map does not preserve area or direction (typically, a map projection sacrifices one to preserve the other, or both to correctly depict a particular distance metric), but does preserve the city of Melbourne as a feature located on the map, near the actual location of Melbourne, Florida. Note that this is not the correct location of Melbourne, Australia, as it is far too much east in the bad map projection, but there is nothing to stop the shared Melbourne being entirely 'correct' and every other feature being shifted as a 'compromise'. The concept of a point being 'preserved', rather than actual dimensionally-meaningful quantities, is meaningless and just adds to the badness of the projection. There are other city names shared between the US and Australia, but they're not located at any obviously similar geographic locations; e.g., the location of Brisbane in the comic is based on the instance in Queensland, not California (potentially named after the main example) or North Dakota.
This is the second comic in October 2024 in which Tasmania appears, the first being 2996: CIDABM. Both feature the major island groups in the Bass Strait, in this case perhaps intended as a sort of analogue to the Florida Keys, or else orphaned coastline features across the 'missing' segment of the US peninsula.
Geographical relationships
From west to east, the Australian states and territories contain the following U.S. states; the positions of Australian cities on the map are also listed:
Western Australia contains the following U.S. states:
- Arizona
- California
- Perth appears on the California coast, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
- Colorado
- Idaho
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- Oregon
- Utah
- Washington
- Wyoming
Northern Territory contains the following U.S. states:
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Michigan (Upper Peninsula)
- Minnesota
- Darwin is positioned in northwestern Minnesota.
- Missouri
- Nebraska
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Wisconsin
South Australia contains the following U.S. states:
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- Adelaide is located in the Mississippi River delta region of Louisiana.
- Oklahoma
- Texas
Queensland contains the following U.S. states and territories:
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Indiana
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan (Lower Peninsula)
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- Brisbane is located on the coast in southeast North Carolina.
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- Tennessee
- Vermont
- Virginia
- West Virginia
New South Wales contains the following U.S. states:
- Alabama
- Georgia
- Canberra, and presumably the rest of the Australian Capital Territory, is located in southeastern Georgia.
- Mississippi
- South Carolina
- Sydney is located along the coast of South Carolina, near the location of Charleston.
Victoria and Tasmania combine to make up the U.S. state of Florida, which is now divided into two non-contiguous parts. As a result Tasmania, which has a history of being omitted from maps of Australia, is displayed but not named. Melbourne is located in the southeast corner of Victorian Florida. Although Tasmania's largest city Hobart is not labeled, it could share the same general location of Miami on the map. Alaska and Hawaii, the two non-contiguous states of the United States, do not appear in the projection. Other major geographic distortions include:
- The U.S. now has two quadripoints, with the intersection of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico joining the existing Four Corners.
- Indiana has a border with Arkansas.
- Alabama and Mississippi have lost Gulf Coast access, as Florida has a border with Louisiana.
- Missouri has a north-south border with Oklahoma.
- Miami is separated from the lower 48 states, as it is now located in the non-contiguous Tasmanian Florida.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
Above the map, in 3 paragraphs:
- Bad map projection #102:
- [In larger letters than the first or the third paragraph]: The United Stralia
- A 50/50 US/Australia blend
[A map whose left side looks like that of Australia and whose right side looks like that of the United States, with Tasmania swapped out for a supposed island that looks like South Florida. The modified subdivisions of Australia are bordered with black with their names also black, while those of the United States are bordered with the same grey the city names are written with, with the US state abbreviations being a brighter one]:
Trivia
The use of "Stralia" in the title echoes a common Australian verbal abbreviation for the country, often styled something like 'Stralia, in casual speech or sometimes more formally.
On the day this comic was released, the xkcd homepage changed to show a strip showing Cueball installing a "Harris For President" sign in some grass, presumably on his lawn. This relates to the upcoming 2024 US presidential election.
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