Talk:Geography of Australia

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This article contains material from the CIA World Factbook (2000 edition) which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain.
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[edit] Measurement

I don't get the bit at maritime claims: nm? Isn't that nanometres? A very small unit? I'm confused... - Mark Ryan

  • I believe that nm in this context means a nautical mile. Its length is defined to be the length of an arc of angle one minute (1/60th of a degree) at the equator. That is, 1 nautical mile is approximately 1.852 kilometers or 1.1508 miles. It is frequently used when measuring distance on the sea or in the air, probably for historical reasons. -MarkReid

Query - I don't understand the land usage statistics. 6% arable land etc... Does that mean UNUSED arable land? Then it says X% grazing land and so on... I assume the totals of all those numbers will add up to 100% Karen Johnson

[edit] Subject of page

The current article seems to be about the Geography of the Commonwealth of Australia instead of the Australian continent.

Is Britain part of Europe ? Yes / Is Japan part of Asia ? Yes / Is Tasmania part of Australia ? Yes / Is New Guinea part of Australia ? Yes. Because each of these is a continental island on their continental shelf. Can the authors please either update the article to reflect the geography of Australia, or otherwise rename it as the Geography of the Commonwealth of Australia (in which case please add information about Christmas & Lord Howe Islands. All Best :).211.30.84.166 17:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Is New Guinea part of Australia? Is Northern Ireland part of Ireland? Yes and no. Australia is both the name of the Commonwealth of Australia and the continent just as we might use Ireland to refer either to the Irish Republic or the island.
The Geography and climate section of the article on the Commonwealth of Australia refers readers to this article as the main article so I would say that it is intended to be about the geography of the Commonwealth of Australia. I would agree, though, that Geography of the Commonwealth of Australia would be the better title: this avoids the ambiguity.
However, if the article were about the continent, then it should be merged to Australia (continent) as discussed on that article's talk page. The authors (up till now) obviously don't make the distinction as can be seen by the opening sentence: "The geography of Australia encompasses a wide variety of biogeographic regions being the world's smallest continent but the sixth-largest country." Jimp 07:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I've added a note at the top of the article to make readers aware that the article is about the geography of the Commonwealth of Australia and included a link to Australia (continent). Jimp 31 January 2006
I concur, J. We must also be mindful when referring to this and that: while there is duality/ambiguity in this instance, there are topics specific to the geography of the country (especially geopolitics, national subdivisions), others that are more macro in nature (plate tectonics), and others yet that may apply to both. For example regarding zoogeography, et al., we should also consider biomes, ecoregions, et al. too. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 08:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Monolith

It's stated on the Monolith page that Uluru is not a Monolith, but this article claims it is... Annihilatenow 16:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've changed it to mention Mount Augustus, which is actually the world's largest monolith, even though it is not as well known. I believe [1] is a very reliable source, and should be believed. Graham/pianoman87 talk 09:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weather

I have mentioned the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, but it might be worthwhile that quite a bit of the weather (especially during summer) is caused by cold fronts coming up from the Southern Ocean.

[edit] Proposed Merge

[edit] Landforms

  • Keep - important and largely notable. Smbarnzy 11:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge whatever useful information the article contains. I'm concerned the article is attempting to establish a classification in violation of our no original research policy. Surely, any useful discussion of Australian landforms is containable within the geography of Australia article.--cj | talk 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge --Peta 23:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep more is better then less, just because an article is small now does not mean it will be small in the future and in the future there might be a problem of too much information and people will start deleting information just because there is too much.Potaaatos 17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - Shiftchange 12:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Snow in Australia

  • Merge as too narrow scope. Smbarnzy 11:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge.--cj | talk 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge --Peta
  • Keep more is better then less, just because an article is small now does not mean it will be small in the future and in the future there might be a problem of too much information and people will start deleting information just because there is too much.Potaaatos 17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - Shiftchange 12:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dryness of the Australian Continent

  • Merge - sounds like a section of this article to me! too narrow scope. Smbarnzy 11:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
07:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge attempt a section in this article first. If it proves too unwieldy, then split off into daughter article per the summary style. --cj | talk 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge --Peta 23:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep more is better then less, just because an article is small now does not mean it will be small in the future and in the future there might be a problem of too much information and people will start deleting information just because there is too much.Potaaatos 17:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge The dryness of the continent is a characterisic of our climate. - Shiftchange 12:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not Fair

I also think merging is bad, the problem will arise in the future when the article becomes too big and people will start to delete information, it is better to have many small articles because they will take much longer to grow and keep away to crazy deletersPotaaatos 17:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

please read WP:OWN - just because you created an article doesn't give you any greater ownership of the article now than anyone else. You do own copyright in your contributions, but by contributing them to Wikipedia you have explicitly licenced them under the GNU Free Documentation License. You claim on talk:Dryness of the Australian continent that you're not done and inten to complete the article, but it hasn't happened in over two months.

Potaaatos, people will not delete well-referenced information. If this article ever became too big, it would be split in summary style, to create daughter articles, just like this article is in turn a daughter of Australia, linked from Australia#Geography. Two of these three have no references whatsoever, and the third has rather vague "Sources".
My first opinion based on the titles was to use two of these to create a new Climate of Australia article as a daughter of this one, and merge the other one in here. On reading them all, I think merge is best, possibly followed later by a split if too much information ends up collected. The split might not create any of these articles. Note that a proposal to merge explicitly means we value the information you have contributed, but would like to arrange it differently. --Scott Davis Talk 10:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mount Kosciuszko not the highest point

... according to Wikipedia, the highest point is actually here. Since the article specifically deals with the Commonwealth, I'm making the change. Leon 23:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)