Australia

The sixth-largest country in the world and the only one that covers an entire continent. The Great Barrier Reef runs about 2,300 km and is the largest structure made by living organisms on Earth, visible from orbit. Around eighty percent of its mammals, reptiles and flowering plants exist nowhere else. Melbourne and Sydney are within roughly a hundred thousand people of each other, and which counts as the largest city depends on where the boundary is drawn.

The facts

Capital

Canberra

Area

7,741,220 km² — 2,988,901 sq mi

Population

27,614,411 (2025)

Density

3.6 people per km²

Currency

Australian dollar (AUD, $)

Official language

English

Time zones

UTC+08:00, UTC+08:45, UTC+09:30, UTC+10:00, UTC+10:30

Calling code

+61

Drives on the

left

ISO codes

AU · AUS

Continent

Oceania

How it compares

By area

6 of 200

By population

55 of 200

Population is the only figure on this page that dates — it is a 2025 estimate and will drift. Area, capital, currency, languages, calling code and driving side change rarely or never.

Countries of a similar size