Where's Where In Australia and how to remember Australian States

Up on Facebook pops a picture or a wonderful winery with an intriguing maze. The name of the place is Bago Winery, but where is it? In Australia. Where in Australia? New South Wales.

I'm sure all Australians know where that is. I don't, although I have been to Perth on the west coast, and Sydney on the East and Melbourne in the South and Canberra on a day trip, somewhere inland, as well as up the east coast to Brisbane, which is a cross between New York with skyscrapers and Blackpool with tourist attractions, along the beach strip.

Now, back to New South Wales. I google it and up comes a map. The main city is Sydney. That gives me a handy alliteration. Initial letter S. Sydney is in New South Wales.

I take a look at Australia in Wiki but don't get given the States which I would expect to be first. Finally, another search brings up the states. Two are easy to identify and remember. Western Austrlia is in the West. Southern Australia is in the south, in the centre of the South.  

The two others are Queensland and Victoria. Fortunately they are in that order, reading noth to south. Queensland is north of New South Wales. Victoria is south of New South Wales.

Now I can look at a blank map and work out which state is which.

The island is Tasmania. Its capital is Hobart.

Map in Wiki from 

User:Lokal_Profil

v t e Largest populated areas in Australia 2021 data from Australian Bureau of Statistics[307]
Rank	Name	State	Pop.	Rank	Name	State	Pop.
1	Sydney	NSW	5,259,764	11	Geelong	Vic	289,400
2	Melbourne	Vic	4,976,157	12	Hobart	Tas	251,047
3	Brisbane	Qld	2,568,927	13	Townsville	Qld	181,665
4	Perth	WA	2,192,229	14	Cairns	Qld	155,638
5	Adelaide	SA	1,402,393	15	Darwin	NT	148,801
6	Gold Coast–Tweed Heads	Qld/NSW	706,673	16	Toowoomba	Qld	143,994
7	Newcastle–Maitland	NSW	509,894	17	Ballarat	Vic	111,702
8	Canberra–Queanbeyan	ACT/NSW	482,250	18	Bendigo	Vic	102,899
9	Sunshine Coast	Qld	355,631	19	Albury-Wodonga	NSW/Vic	97,676
10	Wollongong	NSW

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are eight capital cities in Australia, each of which functions as the seat of government for the state or territory in which it is located. One of these, Canberra, is also the national capital. Section 125 of the Constitution of Australia specified that the seat of the national government, that is, the national capital, would be in its own territory within New South Wales, at least 100 miles (161 km) from Sydney. The Constitution specified that until this national capital was ready, the Parliament would sit in Melbourne. In 1927, the national capital was finally ready and the national government relocated from its former seat in Melbourne to Canberra within the Australian Capital Territory (or the Federal Capital Territory as it was known at the time).

In each state and internal territory, the capital is also the jurisdiction's most populous city. The Australian external territory of Norfolk Island has its official capital at Kingston, although this acts merely as the administrative centre of government; its de facto capital is Burnt Pine.^[1]

WESTERN AUSTRALIA NORTHERN TERRITORY SOUTH AUSTRALIA QUEENSLAND NEW SOUTH WALES VICTORIA TASMANIA ●Perth ●Adelaide ●Melbourne ★Canberra (ACT) ●Sydney ●Brisbane ●Hobart ●Darwin

State and territory capitals of Australia

State/territory	Capital	City population[2]	State/territory population[3]	Percentage of state/territory population in capital city	Established	Capital since	Image
New South Wales	Sydney	5,029,768	7,759,274	64.82%	1788	1788
Victoria	Melbourne	4,725,316	6,179,249	76.47%	1835	1851
Queensland	Brisbane	2,360,241	4,848,877	48.68%	1825	1860
Western Australia	Perth	2,022,044	2,558,951	79.02%	1829	1829
South Australia	Adelaide	1,324,279	1,713,054	77.31%	1836	1836
Tasmania	Hobart	224,462	517,588	43.37%	1804	1826
Australian Capital Territory	Canberra	403,468	403,468	100.00%	1913	1913
Northern Territory	Darwin	145,916	245,740	59.38%	1869	1911

References[edit]

1. ^ Norfolk Island - Kingston http://www.pitcairners.org/vt_kingston.html Norfolk Island's Home on the Web
2. ^ Statistics, c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of (28 July 2017). "Main Features - Main Features". www.abs.gov.au.
3. ^ Statistics, c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of (28 July 2017). "Details - Main Features". www.abs.gov.au.

So, to sum up

Capital - State

Sydney - New South Wales

Melbourne - Victoria

Brisbane - QLD

Adelaide - SA

Perth - WA

Capital of Australia - Canberra

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_capital_cities#:

For pictures of Bago Winery go to the previous post.

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How Do You Remember The Australian States? What have they in common with learning Chinese Numbers?

AUSTRALIA

Where are the states of Australia? Could you quickly teach them to somebody else? How do you remember them?

Problem
I was learning Chinese numbers on Duolingo when up popped a suggestion that I try their Tinycards. I know and like the Tinycards. Before I could find the ones on Chinese numbers, up popped the suggestion that I try the states or territories of Australia.  I've always wanted to know these. There are fewer than a dozen. Fewer than half a dozen. Five big ones. How hard is that! I thought I would try this quiz and add to my general knowledge about countries. How does it work?

Answers
It's a bit like the multiple choice questions in the Chinese numbers.

Chinese Numbers
In the Chinese numbers, they offer five choices. One of the choices is Yuan, which is the currency, and this comes last. So you are left with four choices. You start by process of elimination. The same applies to learning the Australian territories.

We start on the left, the West, the nearest point if you are flying into Australia. Western Australia has to be to the left. Northern is to the North. South is in the middle in the south.  But note that although it's Western and Northern, it's not Southern but South. I got that wrong the first time.

(Perth, with an E and an R, is in Western Australia.)

Now we come to New South Wales. It's not in the centre south because we've already done that one.

So let's look at the last word of the three, Wales, which is furthest East of the three word New South Wales.  That sounds is a bit like Wales on the Map of Great Britain, lower down, but not on the west of Australia, on the east.

Photo by Adrian Gigante from Sydney. In Wikipedia.

Think of Sydney Harbour Bridge, like the bridge across to Wales. Think that Down Under, where the seasons are reversed, they do things differently.

Severn Bridge. Wales. UK. Photo from Wikipedia. Public domain.

The Severn Bridge, Wales.
Now, next, what is north of New South Wales? Queensland. Wales is part of Britain, the Queen's land. (Of course, these places were named in the time of Queen Victoria. But you can think of Queen Elizabeth II.

I looked at the map and didn't even notice Victoria until I brought it up on the more detailed map.

It's in the east and south.

Logically, going south on the east coast, we say Queen Victoria, so Queen(sland) is to the north of New South Wales and Victoria is to the south, Victoria from the past being less important and smaller than the Queen.

Melbourne is named after one of Queen Victoria's ministers, the Prime Minister. The name was not chosen by Victoria by the Governor of Victoria. So it is in what was his territory, Victoria.

Look at the map and say the names, three or four times. However, I think that's hardly necessary. I know them all. You also learn by teaching. Maybe you could teach somebody else.

Useful Websites
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/decks/2JvHmk3/chinese-numbers
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/decks/oM9Qei/australian-states-territories

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please save (bookmark) and pass on links to your family and friends.