Why Nobody Lives in Most of Australia (The Hidden Reason)

Australia is almost as big as the lower 48 states, yet about 85% of its people live within 50 km of the coast. It isn't just one big desert: four problems are stacked on top of each other, and every attempt to beat them failed the same way. 0:00 Intro 0:32 Australia at Night 2:17 Dry Air, Misplaced Mountains 4:35 Old Soil, Fickle Rivers 6:14 The Boat in the Desert 8:03 Goyder's Line 11:30 The Hidden Inland Sea 14:40 Life in the Outback 20:02 Never Really Empty 22:20 Could the Map Change? Sources: ABS – Regional population, 2024–25 – https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/p... ABS – National, state and territory population – https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/p... ABS – How many people live in Australia's coastal areas? – https://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/P... Wikipedia – Climate of Australia (Bureau of Meteorology figures) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_A... Geoscience Australia – Elevations – https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/na... McMahon et al. – Australian hydrology (IAHS) – https://iahs.info/uploads/dms/13365.06-30-... National Museum of Australia – Water: did you know – https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/water/d... Australian Museum – Charles Sturt – https://australian.museum/about/history/ex... Wikipedia – Goyder's Line – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goyder%27s_Line CSIRO – The Bradfield Scheme Assessment – https://www.csiro.au/en/research/natural-e... Geoscience Australia – The Great Artesian Basin – https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/the-great... NASA Earth Observatory – Rare Filling of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre – https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1... Map imagery: Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0 · Terrain: AWS Terrain Tiles · Vector data: Natural Earth. Photos: Satellite: NASA Worldview / GIBS, MODIS Terra · NASA Goddard Photo and Video (CC BY 2.0) · NASA / Rawpixel (CC0) · Wikimedia Commons – David Stanley (CC BY 3.0), Peterdownunder (CC BY-SA 3.0), Heritage branch staff (CC BY 3.0) · Flickr – philip.mallis, Stuart Smith., amandabhslater, Bureau of Reclamation, S O Shattuck, aussiejeff, Percita, squigglycircle, Soon. (CC BY-SA 2.0), gajman, CazzJj, SoilScience.info, lockthegate, Jorge Lascar, jeans_Photos, Enkhtuvshin's 5DmkII (CC BY 2.0), Aussie~mobs, Jack Heywood Photography (public domain), Daquella manera (CC0) · Pixabay – Anewlifetraveling, sangphotography, Ian5152, phlyingdoctor, Vimeo-Free-Videos, ZenJoe, Joe_hackney, JayShawflybydrones, DancingSky, LorettaLikes, thatmftguy, Drone_Aventura, daniloriba, caelan, AndyWolares, Amirirani, virtualMaryam, PaulsAdventures, TRAPHITHO, Gylfi, Thomas-Ritter, Moos-Media, agentluca, Kanenori, MAdrian78, TonyDias7, marvinpolis. #geography #australia #documentary