What if Australia had become a version of Africa?

In this boldy reimagined Australia, we would not be a single nation of 28 million – but long ago divvied up into a series of nation states founded by colonial powers.

Has it occurred to anyone else that the shape of the Australian continent is both balanced and pleasing? Picture: istock

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If the universe has been expanding in every direction since the Big Bang, then surely Earth can be viewed with equal validity from any direction. After all, there is neither up nor down, neither north nor south, in the vastness of the cosmos.

So why do we persist with a single view of Earth with the northern hemisphere being positioned at the top and Australia relegated to a space “Down Under”? Is it not fair, or at least equally valid, to view Earth with Australia and Antarctica at the top?

And has it occurred to anyone else that the shape of the Australian continent is both balanced and pleasing? South America seems to me to be all but teetering on the tip of its southernmost point, Tierra del Fuego. Africa’s southern cape is more rounded, sturdier, but visually at least there’s still a lot of land mass that slims down to a relatively narrow Cape of Good Hope. Australia is different. Our shape is balanced, and in proportion.

This quite unique continental balance is provided by having, on one side, Western Australia’s protrusion into the Indian and Southern Oceans, book-ended by Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin – and on the other side, the Cape York Peninsula. The Great Australian Bight creates a link between east and west with what appears on maps to be an archway supported at each end by land mass protrusions into the sea.

Australia is but a (chunky) splinter of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent. Picture: istock

Of course, Australia is but a (chunky) splinter of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent. I wonder how our nation might be different had Gondwana’s tectonic forces created a mountain range along Australia’s west coast. North America has the Rockies in the west and the Appalachians in the east, creating an agribusiness super bowl via the gift of the mighty Mississippi River. Australia’s Great Dividing Range, stretching from Far North Queensland to Western Victoria, feeds the Murray-Darling Basin. From which we feed ourselves and the world!

But in a boldly reimagined Australia, what river systems might have flowed from a major mountain range along the west coast, depositing rich alluvial soils to our continent’s interior over millions of years? This would have created the opportunity for a mighty city, perhaps the size of Melbourne, to have emerged at the point where rivers from the east and west spilled into the sea at Spencer Gulf in South Australia.

What if Australia was divided up into a series of nation states, like Africa? Picture: istock

In such a world, counterpart cities to the east coast’s Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane would have surely sprung up along the Pilbara and Kimberley coasts. Imagine Karratha and Broome at two or three million people! Darwin, too, would be a sprawling tropical metropolis.

In this imagined world, Australia would not be a single nation of 28 million but possibly a version of Africa, long ago divvied up into a series of nation states founded by colonial powers. I am not convinced that Australia would have united into a single nation had our geology been similar to that of North America.

And while it’s fun to ponder how things might have turned out had the geology of Australia been completely different, I would prefer the resources, the climate and the stories of Australia today: abundant, pleasant and forever striving for improvement.

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