A Ten State Australia?

I don't think there would be enough people in the northwest of Australia to warrant two states there, as the map shows. Seeing this post reminded me that when I was much younger, and didn't know much about Australian geography, I thought that there actually was a state named Central Australia, with Alice Springs as the capital. I doubt there are enough people for this, either.
 

Seldrin

Banned
I don't think there would be enough people in the northwest of Australia to warrant two states there, as the map shows. Seeing this post reminded me that when I was much younger, and didn't know much about Australian geography, I thought that there actually was a state named Central Australia, with Alice Springs as the capital. I doubt there are enough people for this, either.

There actually was a state of central Australia for a couple of years, but the lack of population and well, importance, meant that it disappeared pretty quickly.
 
I noticed that Victoria and most of NSW were part of one state, Guelphia. If demography is the same as OTL the Guelphia would have over half of the population and even more of the wealth and would totally dominate national politics in a way that can't happen in OTL.
 
I don't think most of these regional divisions would have survived if they'd been implemeted, at least not as colonies and states--some of these areas today barely have their own local governments, regional mayors, etc. This is really no different than having the NT administered by NSW during the 19th century, even after the creation of other self-contained colonies.
strangemap.jpg
Strangemaps said:
This map, dated 1838, shows an earlier proposal for the subdivision of Australia into 10 states. It was published by the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in London, and accompanied an article entitled Considerations on the Political Geography and Geographical Nomenclature of Australia. In it, the following divisions were proposed:

• Dampieria: North-western Australia
• Victoria: South-western Australia (far from the present-day state in the South-east)
• Tasmania: part of present-day Western Australia and Northern Territory (not the present-day island/state)
• Nuytsland: near the Nullarbor Plain
• Carpentaria: south of the Gulf of Carpentaria
• Torresia: Northern Queensland
• Cooksland: near Brisbane, in New South Wales and Queensland
• Guelphia: present-day Victoria, most of New South Wales, part of Southern Australia
• Van Diemen’s Land: what is now Tasmania

Nuytsland stikes me as very weird. You move the western boundary two hundred-or-so kilometres into the alternate Victoria and you have the Kalgoolie/Boulder and Coolgardie goldfields as part of the Nullarbor province. Which would have meant a very economically self-sufficient colony by the end of the century (in fact, people on the WA goldfields did agitate for separation from the Perth government in the eighteen nineties).

There's no way the Royal Geographical Society could have known about that in 1838. To them it must have been one vast barren wasteland (though I suppose they still believed in the existence of an inland sea in the centre of the continent).

strangemap.jpg
 
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/130-a-ten-state-australia/

Interesting map. What would the implications be? If it were ten seperate colonies/admin areas and federation flows with its conditions as OTL, then its unlikely that the colonies would federate in Australia given that "Cooksland" would reject it. OTL, Southern Queensland rejected federation nearly 2:1 and Queensland as a whole nearly rejected the proposals as well due to many factors..

During last century the two regions within the Australian states that were most interested in taking advantage of the Constitutional provisions of Chapter VI were New England in NSW, and almost every region in Queensland outside of the southeast.
 
The Cooksland sounds decent,Tazmania in the Australian mainland sounds great. But that "Nuytsland" sounds like something from Canada,Alaska or Greenland.
 
Nuyts was the Dutch captain who charted the south Australian coastline to about modern Ceduna in 1627.
 
The Cooksland sounds decent,Tazmania in the Australian mainland sounds great. But that "Nuytsland" sounds like something from Canada,Alaska or Greenland.

If implemented, most would simply remain territories for some time though. \no problem really with that...It wouldn't give you 10 states, probablyonly about 8 maybe nine. I would argue that the otl Victoria should still be separated off of Guelphia at some point. that would spread the political forces over three states anyways, perhaps 4. Mind you depending on the terms of federation then perhaps you could add New Zealand as well as 2 states in the north and south Island.

the terr. as marked could start as districts for instance in much the same way the NWT in Canada started. Many became their own provinces but there was eventual amalgamation and division. Even so Dampieria would probably amalgamate with Victoria. Tasmania and Carpentaria might remain as districts within an enlarged \northern terr. with perhaps Arnhem added as a separate district. Add NZ as 2 states and you have 10 states if you still separate of otl Victoria when Gold is discovered.
 
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I don't think most of these regional divisions would have survived if they'd been implemeted, at least not as colonies and states--some of these areas today barely have their own local governments, regional mayors, etc. This is really no different than having the NT administered by NSW during the 19th century, even after the creation of other self-contained colonies.
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What I like is how they moved Spain and portugal half-way around the world!:)
 
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