While Australia is the 6th largest nation in the world in terms of estimated measurement, its population density is surprisingly low. According to Australia’s government statistics in June 2020, Australia’s population density is 3.3 people per square kilometer. Comparing this data to one of the largest nations like India which has a population density of 464 people per square kilometer, it’s easy to see that Australia’s population is growing.

However, in the biggest cities in Australia are Sydney and Melbourne, the population density quite massive for local statistics but not really impressive to others.

• Melbourne has Australia’s highest population density at 22,400 people per square kilometer.
• Potts Point and Pyrmont have the second-highest population density in Australia at 16,700 and 16,500 people per square kilometer, respectively.

Still, for a big city, these numbers are still not high. Compared to other big cities, New York City has a population density of over 38,000 people per square kilometer.

To sum up all data above, Australia actually only has five major cities: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney, which included two out of every three Australians. As a result, Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with 90% of the population living in a small pack of populated metropolitan regions.

After all, everyone knows that Australia’s environment is covered in a group of massive deserts, not to mention many dangerous animals and insects.

Australia’s population density is low because most of the country’s geographic perspective is desert (also known as the outback) and presents extremely difficult living conditions. So, while Australia’s major cities have over-crowded comparable to the rest of the Western world when you take into consideration all the empty space in the middle, you get a low overall population density.

Another fact is Australia is close to the frozen continent of Antarctica, and the western side is mixed up with a cold ocean which would lead to not providing enough heat. There is also a water shortage problem where Australia’s population more than 25 million but the water supply for only 12–15 million. How do 25 million survive with the water for far fewer? They’ve tapped aquifers that took thousands of years to fill, and in some cases made them useless in under 200 years of that area’s underground water being utilized.

It seems strange and suprise to know that Australia leads the way in many areas of environmental degradation, and has serious depletion problems of resources in other areas. First, Australians have pushed the deforestation to an alarming extent. Today, about 40% of the continent has been severely changed by intensive land use, and its forests have been cleared since European settlement with a significant proportion of what remains fragmented and weed-infested.

Australian farming is mostly an antipodean offshoot of European examples, but in a harsh waterless environment with soils lacking essential nutrients. Cattle and sheep destroy the desert vegetation and are stocked at such low rates as to be highly unprofitable. And the massive water shortage doesn’t stop the strong resistance to recycled drinking water. Water is also wasted for non-sustainable crops and even washing vegetables, with thousands of litres per kilogram required to produce many crops.

In the early-1990s, Australia had a migration rate of more than 35,000 pax per year. The average for the 20th century was 52,000 per year. This level of immigration would still mean Australia receives more immigrants than other developed countries. These numbers would allow Australia’s population to stabilize eventually, but they would add several more millions of people before reaching our peak.

Once population growth has ended, either migration could be increased gradually to maintain a stable population, or the population could be allowed to decline to a lower and more sustainable level.

Unlike the US, Australia did not want to become a huge manufacturing country and experience a flood of immigration. So once Australia became a developed country, the Australian government made immigration extremely tough. During the 20th century Australia strictly enforced the White Australia policy up until the 1970s, making it difficult for immigrants from any non-white countries to immigrate. Slowly Australia changed that immigrants are given visas based on the job they are applying for. It is basically impossible for an unskilled migrant to immigrate unless they marry an Australian citizen.