Haha thanks for bringing this up. I try VERY HARD to get pronunciations right in my videos. As far as I can tell the community, even within Jervis Bay, is divided on how to pronounce it, with some saying Jervis and some saying Jervis, as you point out. I read a post somewhere that people *from* Jervis say one thing and everyone else says something different. NOT EASY
These kind of surveying mistakes give character to real life. I love it. And I'm still blown away by how close such vast calculations and navigation got to accuracy back in the day before computers, digital instruments and satellites were a thing.
I grew up in New England. I always thought of Canada as being north of me. In fact we used to drive up to Quebec every once in a while to see the sites and that was over a hundred miles north of me. So imagine the mind blowing discovery to find out that more than 50% of Canadians lived further south than I did.
Wow, really interesting... I can't believe that, as an Australian, I didn't know until today that Tasmania and Victoria actually shared a land border...
Prior to watching this video, I would have thought that Tasmania's state boundary would be defined by a distance from its shores, rather than having a straight line sea border like that!
Have been to the WA/SA/NT border markers. Can confirm there is two as shown in the video. I rode a bike out from Wingelina remote community and rode the bike around the markers so I could be in all three states in the same 10 seconds. It is the only time I have been into the Northern Territory 😊
One which really threw me was the existence of that weird tiny timezone on the Nullarbor at the WA SA border: Perth+45min. I never knew that timezone existed until I was there.
That one amused me too. Broken Hill in NSW uses SA time & Docker River Aboriginal Community in WA on the Great Central Road uses NT time. You can get caught at "times" if your after fuel.
@@billolgaaureally, it would make more sense if Victoria was Sydney minus half an hour (currently Adelaide time). Or even if Sydney was half an hour behind where it is. The longitudinal line the eastern timezone is based on is out in the Pacific. The zenith is meant to be midday, but it's closer to 1pm, particularly in western Vic. It's like we're on permanent daylight savings, and then they add daylight savings to daylight savings. It's hard on nurses and tradies and others with 7am starts. In winter you're starting work in the dark.
I saw that explained by the fact the 1/2 time zone extends into SA by a few Kilometres and this lets the Border Village, on the eastern (SA) side of the border, have the same time as Eucla (and over to Caigunia) on the Western side, otherwise people living 1000km from anyone else in either direction would have clocks 1 1/2 hrs different
Also the Australian tectonic plate has moved a good few metres since the surveys were done so they were always chasing a moving target with meridians (not that they knew)
"An academic result was not to be sought after with a high and fanciful degree of accuracy" is the most high-falutin' way I've ever heard "Eh, close enough for government work" expressed
Herd Island, which is part of Tasmania, is further west than any part of Western Australia. It's Island group is a declared National Marine Park Melbourne is the most Southerly city in the world with a population over 1Million.
I misread the fact about Melbourne and thought you'd taken good-hearted sledging of Tassie to the next level! Took a second read to realise you weren't saying Hobart doesn't count as a city, just that it has less than 1 Million people.
You appear to be mixing up Heard Is with Macquarie Is. Heard and McDonald Islands in the Southern Indian Ocean are an Australian external territory in their own right and is not included in the territory of any Australian State. Macquarie Island in the Southern Pacific Ocean is included in the territory of the State of Tasmania.
i love this, finally some new facts to tell my friends who will keep not listening to me because im boring and i talk about geography and linguistics all the time
As a Victorian, I knew about Boundary Islet, and the deviation on the Murray River, however I didn't know about the 127m difference in the WA/NT/SA border, like all Aussies I thought that one was as straight as it could be, and I didn't know that Norfolk Island voted as part of the ACT. I guess you're not too old to learn something new everyday.
had to check for myself Yes, it is. Northern boundary of California is at 42 deg N and the southern most boundary of Canada bisecting Lake Erie is 41.7 deg N
i thought this said the northernmost point in california is north of the southernmost point of california and that californians were just too stupid to realize north means north
I understood that the 9 km? boundary of South Australia and Victoria has not been fixed and those people living in that small region face quite a few issues with jurisdiction. It was exceptionally bad during Covid when states had different restrictions.
The high court of Australia and on appeal to London the judicial comity of the kings privy counsel fixed the bounty between South Australasia and Victoria just before ww1 it saying that the survey was a good faith effort and should stand despite upgrades in accuracy as they didn't want to have to hear the case next time technology improved (the UK gave a hill 2.5cm and mountain status by updating its understanding of sea level in 2015) None the less during the response to covid internal boundaries in many places caused issues when they suddenly became fiefs. The river boundary is also a bit interesting and less fixed.
The farms more closely tied to Renmark in SA than Mildura are more like 30-40km from the border. While fixing the boundary might have been nicer for a few families, it wouldn't have fixed the overall problem (which really should have been to exempt the whole area from restrictions).
I'm not Australian but I always imagine Perth being further north than it is. I always thought it was closer to half way up the west coast. So it's no surprise to me that Sydney is further south than Perth (for the wrong reason, of sorts)
someone from Perth here! Perth being almost in the very south-west corner contributes to making the whole state of WA really weird. WA is the 2nd largest subdivision of a country in the world. Perth has a population of ~2.1 million, the entire state ~2.8 million. So 74% of the population situated in one of the extreme outlying corners and the rest spread out over a massive land area.
Fascinating. I had heard once, while holidaying on the Murray R. near the town of Barmah, that there was a place nearby in which Victoria was extended to the northern bank of the Murray. Now I know why. One point re borders that bugged me (still does, actually) is how come Vic. / NSW border doesn't go on a level line to the coast where the Murray R. starts in the mountains
The main thing to take from this is that you shouldn't trust Australian surveyors 🤣 Back in old times precision was extremely tough to accomplish making surveys expensive. To be only a few hundred meters off across a continent wasn't bad, and half that much was exceptional. In the "new world" of North America the Spaniards were particularly bad at surveying and made many errors leading to legal disputes and illegal killings.
Just a little comment on the quirk about Norfolk Island. This only came about in 2016. Prior to that the island was actually considered a colony of NSW. Thus their was no federal presence on the island, and the islanders were not entitled to much in the way of federal assistance.
I couple of years ago I was checking out the Four Corners region of the US on Google maps and was following the borders of the states away from that point. I found that the border of Utah has a "bend" in it for what ever reason - just a slight deviation by a few RCHs. Don't know why it is, but it's weird...
as usual its the Surveyors "fault".. more than 200 years they were tasked with marking the borer between the States, but with the tools at the time there were unavoidable inaccuracies. When this was noticed several hundred years later it was agreed that the originally marked border is the actual border (including its bends), not the description where the border should be where the position of the Border stones was based on.
There's a monument there now to prevent it, but as a child me and my siblings all took turns standing on one foot in 4 states at the same time 😁 It was just a granite ground marker back then.
Lingiari is pronounced without a hard G. Listen to From Little Things Big Things Grow if you're confused. Or also if you're not confused because it's a beautiful song.
Good job mate I lived in Canberra for eight years and many people who lived there for a very long time have told me the reason for Jervis Bay was that in the event of a military conflict they wanted the capacity for a naval port for Canberra however, at the same time they moved the ACT itself in land because back in 1913 that was out of range of naval gunfire doesn’t matter these days because of Intercontinental missiles…… And not only that when you buy a house in the ACT you don’t even own the land. The transaction is the same. Everything looks the same on the surface, but you actually are getting a 99 year lease on the land so if the capital Territory wants it back. They can beat you off very easily. …..
Interesting comment about intercontinental missiles. I've heard there's underground bunkers / tunnels in Canberra and specifically under the Department of Defence building in Russell. I don't know how true that is but I was under the impression that Canberra was a prime target in the cold war and would have been nuked after pine gap.
@@simonboland not sure about tunnels, but I know for a fact under Parliament house there’s a massive bunker and in Fyshwick which is next door suburb to Symonston where are used to work. There is another building for the Prime Minister and staff to escape to in the event of a conflict, and it’s chockablock full of computers, and high security bomb protection there used to be news articles reporting on it I forget the name of the street
If the government wants you off a certain piece of land, they can do that anyway, anywhere - and they don't even have to wait 99 years. Owning anything really means no more than the government saying "if someone tries to take it off you, we won't let them". They can make an exception if that someone is the government 😁
I was amazed to find out that the northernmost point of Victoria is around the same latitude as Botany Bay and therefore is more northerly than a significant portion of Sydney's metropolitan area.
In Canada the apparent north-south boundary between the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan is in fact a whole series of jogs about 2km each. Unlike the Australian examples this is the result of careful surveying. Land for settlers was divided into 6 mile squares. That works out fine for the north south dimension, but as one goes north the western edge of the boxes needs to move progressively further west. The weirdness at the southeast corner of Manitoba, at the north-south borderline with the US, is the subject of many videos. That WAS an error. At least in Oz the borderlines were never the result of negotiations with break-away revolutionaries.
I grew up in Mt Isa and I remember people saying that our closest state capital was Adelaide (they weren't counting Darwin as a territory capital). Its not true, but it is closer than I thought, Brisbane city is only about 20km closer than Adelaide.
Supposedly there is a path from ACT to Jervis Bay to allow ACT civilians to escape if there was a war or something. Also all capital cities needed a port which was bit difficult to do for the ACT. It would have been much better if they put the ACT on the coast, warmer winters, milder summers and not 3hrs drive to go to the beach, but someone was paranoid and needed the states capital to be safe from sea attack or something (or perhaps more sheep were needed?). The best bit of quackery was the rail gauges from each state were different to avoid states stealing competition some real short sightedness back then.
Another interesting border is Qld - NSW from the Coolongatta/Tweed Heads coast inland. I believe it was designed so that both states got equal share of the watershed from the mountains on the eastern side. And then it follows the dumaresq/macintyre river system from about Texas to Goondiwindi and onto Mungindi.
Talking of Mungindi… About 40 years ago, I was in Narrabri, talking to some locals about my weekend trip to what I pronounced as Mungindee They laughed and corrected me and said, “No, it’s in NSW, so it’s pronounced with an “eye” sound on the end” I was confused. But they went on to explain that all the places north of the border, if they end in an “i”, it is pronounced “ee” like Goondiwindi. And everything south of the border in New South Wales, is pronounced “eye”…. like Narrabri, Collarenebri, Quirindi, Boggabri, Wolli Creek, Bondi. I have no clue whether this is true or not. But I just remember it from when I was a kid.
@@AlphaGeekgirl l was heading towards Narrabri, along the Pilliga, and l was soing 170kph in the Pug Oiler. I thought I'd slow down to 115kph. Glad l did as _Highway_ came the other way
Something that blew my mind a while ago is that the Bourke St Mall in Melbourne is closer to the Murray River than it is to the southern most tip of Mainland Australia. by about 3 kms.
At the end you said "Adelaide is North of Canberra". It should be phrased as "Adelaide is further North than Canberra". The former implies direction, the latter implies position.
i feel like one cannot bring up the existence of the ACT without mentioning it is where it is because Melbourne and Sydney couldnt agree with each other so hard they made a new city in-between for the role of the capital.
I think that the left-side outline of Australia (2:30) looks a lot like the head of a lioness, especially when the map is tawny colored like the one used in this video.
And the boundary between NSW and Victoria is not the middle of the Murray River. It's the southern bank. The High Court has held (Ward v R, (1980) 142 CLR 308) that the bank is not the waterline as it happens to be from time but rather the top of the southern bank. That was very important to Mr Ward. He standing at the top of the southern bank when he shot and killed mr Reed, who was standing at the waterline, some feet below. Did the crime happen in Victoria or NSW? The High Court held unanimously that Ward had committed no crime in Victoria. Accordingly his conviction and sentence were set aside. It may sound trivial, but to Mr Ward it was not. In Victoria, the mandatory sentence was the death penalty; in NSW, it was life imprisonment.
@@mikespearwood3914 Left over from the days when Bolte was Premier - he was notoriously in favour of it. A truly nasty man. Ronald Ryan was executed for the murder of a prison guard during an escape. Almost certainly it was not Ryan who had fired the fatal shot and most likely it was fired by another guard whose aim was astray. Any rate, Bolte was asked by a news reporter what he'd been doing t the time Ryan was hanged. His reply - going through the bathroom doing the 3 s-s. Bolte was a terrible man.
That's a bizarre story! There's some flexibility though. When the NSW / Vic border was closed on new years eve 2020 due to lock down, the next day, my Victorian friends and I boarded a steam cruiser at Echuca. The police didn't care that technically we were entering NSW :-)
It's one of those technicalities that pops up from time to time and can really mean something. It was not just a lawyer's trick. The police were probably not aware of the decision. But Bolte was the epitome of a bad, very bad, Liberal Party politician. @@angelicasmodel
Fun fact: South Australia splits the Murray River with Victoria down the middle, which means that the surveying error gives Victoria partial ownership of the Murray (outside of stuff like oxbow lake shenanigans).
The UK has similar quirks. Edinburgh is West of Bristol. There's also a point- I believe it's Strone Point on the Cowal Peninsula on the River Clyde where a direct line South will hit no land till the North Coast of Spain.
saw a reaction video on my page and decided to do the right thing and go to the original video, sadly most people obviously didn't do this which is sad. But great video, thanks for the entertainment!
The Tasmania-Victoria Land Border reminds me of a small quirk in Canada, Where Newfoundland & Labrador actually shares a border with Nunavut, because there's a tiny island in the far north of Labrador split between the two.
Boundary lines based on longitude are hard. latitude is (relatively) easy, surveyor just use sun-shots. Longitude (per-satellite) require clocks, and a minute is a mile.
Imagine if those surveyors built a tunnel and dug from opposite ends. You could end up with a 90 degree bend in the middle of the tunnel. Should sell these facts to organisers of pub trivia nights. Everyone would have their minds blown for example that Tasmania and Victoria share a land border. Everyone just assumes that Victoria's southern border and Tasmania's northern border ends at the coast line and everything else in in Bass strait.
IIRC the onset of daylight saving in Iran is determined annually by "a council of clerics". Makes it hard to write software to determine the time there without internet access...
Nearest equivalents I know of in the US… All of the Northwest Hawaiian island chain (except Midway island, which is a federal territory) is legally part of the city and county of Honolulu. Those (not very inhabited) islands were even part of the Honolulu local phone dialing zone back in the 1990’s. Longest distance local call in the US. Lots of little border offsets in the straight lines in the US. Many are frozen surveying errors, however some are because sometimes Greenwich longitude was used, and sometimes a system of longitude where zero longitude was defined by some marker point in the middle of Washington DC. (Exactly what zero point they used also changed over the years!) The US longitude system puts integer longitudes about 0.04 degrees West of the Greenwich ones. This is why the Eastern border of New Mexico offsets at the boundary between the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. The survey system changes there. It’s a “make up your mind which you are going to use” error. It is why many North-South US borders are displaced slightly West of where people think they should be. That long tilted section in the Eastern border of Oklahoma was a result of an Indian nation successfully winning in court. Hey, we don’t care that you claim it’s a mistake now, you are NOT taking back land you promised to us and giving it to Arkansas! The Oklahoma panhandle was chopped off of Texas. Texas had to give it up in order to legally keep slavery. (Turns out there was a HUGE natural gas field under that strip of land.) The Southern border of Michigan is a result of two different political compromises clashing with each other. The border around Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a result of Benjamin Franklin tricking the British… Canada sometimes did not want to break up already surveyed townships so some tilted Canadian borders have lots of steps in them. Saskatchewan and Manitoba is a good example. But my favorite is the circular arc at the top of Delaware. How often do politicians decide to set a border with a circle instead of a line?!
I have been to most of these corners including Poepples Corner (SA, QLD, NT) in the Simpson Desert (many times) it was moved from the middle of a dry lake to the correct spot. Surveyors General Corner ( WA,SA,NT) has the two seperate posts. The early Suveyors used a fisical Chain to measure & with wear & use the inacuarcies came in.
If the boundary island issue is wierd check the NSW QLD border. Its not the Tweed River. So Coolangatta is a blend of jurisdictions. Council rates, garbage and land tac confusion.. Covid borders were a nightmare when qld closed its border.
There's a town on the the USA Canada border , the border is the middle of the high street. The border also goes through the middle of a public library, which begs the question of if one country bans a book would they move it to the other side, in the wrong section.
There are state lines in the USA like this, too; such as the border between Utah and Colorado. Many of the straight-line borders are slightly wobbly (though you won't see this one maps) because the original survey results were accepted as the legal truth, rather than the "spirit" of them which was following the meridians precisely.
Most people don't realise that any line which follows a parallel of latitude is not straight (other than the equator). The shortest distance between two points on the same parallel of latitude is not along that parallel (again, other than the equator).
Wanna know about funny border regions? Check out Point Roberts, WA in the USA. In order to leave Port Roberts by land, you can to enter Canada and drive for 45 minutes back down to Washington state. The reason is also due to inaccurate surveying.
Other interesting things. The Guinness Book of World Records says that Los Angeles full name is, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. Translated into English, "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula". New Zealand was an original state of Australia and is mentioned as much in the Australian constitution.
New Zealand was never a state of Australia or a part of one. It was once part of the Colony of New South Wales before being declared a colony in its own right.
NZ was never a state but was expected (by some) to be. Because of its place in the Constitution, it can become a state by its own choosing and we Aussies would have to accept it. It's also worth noting that around Parliament House the main roads are named after state capitals and there was to be a Wellington Avenue. However, NZ bailed out before the name had been gazetted and it was named Canberra Ave instead.
@@GoodWhinger AUSTRALIA’S CONSTITUTION The States shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or established by the Commonwealth as States; and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called a State.
technology of theodolites, star books and chronometers of the time. And the lack of a means to do a closing check shot. The reason the borders stand is because it could be changed endlessly with the improvements in technology of GPS and the tectonic shifting of the Australian landmass
Sometime last year I found out about the whole Jervis Bay thing and it blew my mind. I lived in Goulburn for a bit and the capital was only a short drive away, only to end up moving further down the coast and ending up half an hour away from the capital, again. If I ever move state I'll probably end up living somewhere only to find out that the ACT has territory nearby as well. You just can't escape Canberra, god damn.
I can see why they kept the Victorian border where it is today. If they had moved it to match the NSW/Sa border then there would have been a bit of Victoria cut off from the rest of the state, directly below where the NSW/SA border hits the Murray, where it currently stands is much cleaner.
This was interesting. I was hoping you where going to touch on why here in Qld there’s a chunk missing on the SW border. Well not missing but why it’s not a 90° corner.
Fun fact. Victoria's northern border was at one point planned to be the Murrumbidgee, which would mean the ACT would straddle the border between VIC and NSW, but NSW had a whinge about it.
The border between Victoria and South Australia is not straight between the coast and the Murray River. Victoria allocated land that was actually in South Australia before federation.
Interesting. It's even west of Bristol (because so is Liverpool). In fact it seems to be pretty much directly north of Cardiff. On a similar note, Newcastle is west of Nottingham (and considerably west of London)
I had a miniature stroke when you said Jervis bay.... please my guy, it might be spelt Jervis, but its said Jarvis.
Haha thanks for bringing this up. I try VERY HARD to get pronunciations right in my videos. As far as I can tell the community, even within Jervis Bay, is divided on how to pronounce it, with some saying Jervis and some saying Jervis, as you point out. I read a post somewhere that people *from* Jervis say one thing and everyone else says something different. NOT EASY
@@TicketToKnow im from sydney and i have never heard someone pronounce it jervis, everyone here says jarvis
@@TicketToKnow great video btw, don't wanna be 100% negative haha
No, the locals pronounce it JER-vis. Ever been there?
@@kydanoster9027 in Sydney, maybe - in Jervis Bay, they say JER-vis.
"Tasmania, the only island state, ringed by ocean"
Surely you mean "girt by sea"?
These kind of surveying mistakes give character to real life. I love it. And I'm still blown away by how close such vast calculations and navigation got to accuracy back in the day before computers, digital instruments and satellites were a thing.
Computers merely aloow us to make mistakes quicker.
I agree
huh?@@neddyladdy
Yeah 127 meters is all things considered, pretty great
@@CaptCorgiIf you were to travel the 1874km north/south I don't think 0.127km east/west is going to matter.
I grew up in New England. I always thought of Canada as being north of me. In fact we used to drive up to Quebec every once in a while to see the sites and that was over a hundred miles north of me. So imagine the mind blowing discovery to find out that more than 50% of Canadians lived further south than I did.
I was very confused for a moment… Australia also has a New England region! It’s in northern NSW, and once tried to become its own country!
I don't get where the inspiration for this comment comes from
@@astrospeedcuber Nice self-referential comment.
@@sancia_ I think it tried to become its own state within Australia not it's own country
ye you all try building a new England. but with out the rain, music, racism and stand up comedy you just cant do it.
I love the cul-de-sac where you can drive through WA, SA and NT all in one go.
That was an hilarious thing to show on the video. Who drives that? And do they do it, 'cause it's fun'?
Wow, really interesting... I can't believe that, as an Australian, I didn't know until today that Tasmania and Victoria actually shared a land border...
Even more shocking, Denmark and Canada share a land border now :P
Prior to watching this video, I would have thought that Tasmania's state boundary would be defined by a distance from its shores, rather than having a straight line sea border like that!
The Brexit negotiators for the British government didn't realise they had a land border with the EU *allegedly*, so don't feel so bad.
Would have been a pain living on Boundary Islet during all the COVID restrictions rubbish.
Same! I'm Victorian and I had no idea about that!
There is land border between Tasmania and Victoria. And it turns out it’s sealed.
👏👏👏👏👏
👏👏👏👏👏
The convicts own everything and have the finally say.
Like when they tried to destroy the nation with covid.
UA-cam really needs a Comment Of The Day award 😆
😅
Have been to the WA/SA/NT border markers. Can confirm there is two as shown in the video. I rode a bike out from Wingelina remote community and rode the bike around the markers so I could be in all three states in the same 10 seconds. It is the only time I have been into the Northern Territory 😊
I saw the road in the satelite view shown in this video, and I thought to myself that it must only exist so that people can visit the survey markers.
One which really threw me was the existence of that weird tiny timezone on the Nullarbor at the WA SA border: Perth+45min. I never knew that timezone existed until I was there.
That one amused me too.
Broken Hill in NSW uses SA time & Docker River Aboriginal Community in WA on the Great Central Road uses NT time. You can get caught at "times" if your after fuel.
@@billolgaaureally, it would make more sense if Victoria was Sydney minus half an hour (currently Adelaide time). Or even if Sydney was half an hour behind where it is. The longitudinal line the eastern timezone is based on is out in the Pacific.
The zenith is meant to be midday, but it's closer to 1pm, particularly in western Vic. It's like we're on permanent daylight savings, and then they add daylight savings to daylight savings. It's hard on nurses and tradies and others with 7am starts. In winter you're starting work in the dark.
@@fionaanderson5796 Here's a crazy idea: abolish daylight savings entirely.
@@JamesDavy2009 if we split the difference and keep that summer and winter would be ideal.
I saw that explained by the fact the 1/2 time zone extends into SA by a few Kilometres and this lets the Border Village, on the eastern (SA) side of the border, have the same time as Eucla (and over to Caigunia) on the Western side, otherwise people living 1000km from anyone else in either direction would have clocks 1 1/2 hrs different
Also the Australian tectonic plate has moved a good few metres since the surveys were done so they were always chasing a moving target with meridians (not that they knew)
Isn’t Australia on all on one plate? The oceanic plate?
@@lookatthetree978Yes and it has moved
"An academic result was not to be sought after with a high and fanciful degree of accuracy" is the most high-falutin' way I've ever heard "Eh, close enough for government work" expressed
She'll be right mate!
Herd Island, which is part of Tasmania, is further west than any part of Western Australia. It's Island group is a declared National Marine Park
Melbourne is the most Southerly city in the world with a population over 1Million.
I misread the fact about Melbourne and thought you'd taken good-hearted sledging of Tassie to the next level! Took a second read to realise you weren't saying Hobart doesn't count as a city, just that it has less than 1 Million people.
And has Australia's highest peak. Not Mt Kosciusko
You appear to be mixing up Heard Is with Macquarie Is. Heard and McDonald Islands in the Southern Indian Ocean are an Australian external territory in their own right and is not included in the territory of any Australian State. Macquarie Island in the Southern Pacific Ocean is included in the territory of the State of Tasmania.
Heard Island is part of the Heard and McDonald Island territory
i love this, finally some new facts to tell my friends who will keep not listening to me because im boring and i talk about geography and linguistics all the time
I feel your pain. It's history with me. I have a wealth of historical trivia locked away, but my friends couldn't care less.
@@meltedplasticarmyguy geology .. js
As a Victorian, I knew about Boundary Islet, and the deviation on the Murray River, however I didn't know about the 127m difference in the WA/NT/SA border, like all Aussies I thought that one was as straight as it could be, and I didn't know that Norfolk Island voted as part of the ACT. I guess you're not too old to learn something new everyday.
Really impressed by how close the Western border lines were, not bad for basically eyeing it😅
While not a border glitch, something that surprises a lot of people is that northernmost California is north of the south end of Canada.
had to check for myself
Yes, it is.
Northern boundary of California is at 42 deg N and the southern most boundary of Canada bisecting Lake Erie is 41.7 deg N
i thought this said the northernmost point in california is north of the southernmost point of california and that californians were just too stupid to realize north means north
@@trk1973 And San Francisco is at the latitude of southern Portugal, while San Diego is quite a bit south of Casablanca.
That literally cannot be true 😅
@@lavasharkandboygirl9716it is true
Nsw-qld border right in the middle of a street, with timezone change, is the best example of stubborn mess
I understood that the 9 km? boundary of South Australia and Victoria has not been fixed and those people living in that small region face quite a few issues with jurisdiction. It was exceptionally bad during Covid when states had different restrictions.
The high court of Australia and on appeal to London the judicial comity of the kings privy counsel fixed the bounty between South Australasia and Victoria just before ww1 it saying that the survey was a good faith effort and should stand despite upgrades in accuracy as they didn't want to have to hear the case next time technology improved (the UK gave a hill 2.5cm and mountain status by updating its understanding of sea level in 2015)
None the less during the response to covid internal boundaries in many places caused issues when they suddenly became fiefs.
The river boundary is also a bit interesting and less fixed.
The farms more closely tied to Renmark in SA than Mildura are more like 30-40km from the border. While fixing the boundary might have been nicer for a few families, it wouldn't have fixed the overall problem (which really should have been to exempt the whole area from restrictions).
@@hens0w "If there's one case of corona, SHUT THE BORDER!" -Mark McGowan
Was there anyone there that was policing during covid? 😮
I'm not Australian but I always imagine Perth being further north than it is. I always thought it was closer to half way up the west coast. So it's no surprise to me that Sydney is further south than Perth (for the wrong reason, of sorts)
someone from Perth here! Perth being almost in the very south-west corner contributes to making the whole state of WA really weird. WA is the 2nd largest subdivision of a country in the world. Perth has a population of ~2.1 million, the entire state ~2.8 million. So 74% of the population situated in one of the extreme outlying corners and the rest spread out over a massive land area.
@@ktgs6723do you know what the largest subdivision is?
@@Sikosm in Siberia I believe.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-level_administrative_divisions_by_area
@@SikosmThe Sakha Republic part of Russia. It's larger than all of India
Fascinating. I had heard once, while holidaying on the Murray R. near the town of Barmah, that there was a place nearby in which Victoria was extended to the northern bank of the Murray. Now I know why. One point re borders that bugged me (still does, actually) is how come Vic. / NSW border doesn't go on a level line to the coast where the Murray R. starts in the mountains
The main thing to take from this is that you shouldn't trust Australian surveyors 🤣 Back in old times precision was extremely tough to accomplish making surveys expensive. To be only a few hundred meters off across a continent wasn't bad, and half that much was exceptional. In the "new world" of North America the Spaniards were particularly bad at surveying and made many errors leading to legal disputes and illegal killings.
Not trusting Australian surveyors is why I never answer a phone call.
Pfffft Australians amirite?
Wow! Fellow Victorian here. That last fact about the cities hurt my brain! Readjusted everything I thought I'd learned in primary school!
Yeah that Perth being more north than Sydney fact (and the Adelaide/Canberra fact) was pretty mindblowing.
Just a little comment on the quirk about Norfolk Island. This only came about in 2016. Prior to that the island was actually considered a colony of NSW. Thus their was no federal presence on the island, and the islanders were not entitled to much in the way of federal assistance.
Thanks for this comment. Thought the fact about Norfolk was interesting. But I did think it was part of nsw. Is it better now its linked with ACT?
I couple of years ago I was checking out the Four Corners region of the US on Google maps and was following the borders of the states away from that point. I found that the border of Utah has a "bend" in it for what ever reason - just a slight deviation by a few RCHs. Don't know why it is, but it's weird...
as usual its the Surveyors "fault".. more than 200 years they were tasked with marking the borer between the States, but with the tools at the time there were unavoidable inaccuracies. When this was noticed several hundred years later it was agreed that the originally marked border is the actual border (including its bends), not the description where the border should be where the position of the Border stones was based on.
There's a monument there now to prevent it, but as a child me and my siblings all took turns standing on one foot in 4 states at the same time 😁 It was just a granite ground marker back then.
Lingiari is pronounced without a hard G. Listen to From Little Things Big Things Grow if you're confused. Or also if you're not confused because it's a beautiful song.
As an Australian who thought i had a decent geographical understanding of Australia, i didn't know any of these facts. Cool Vid.
Though Tasmania is tiny in relation to the rest of the country…it is bigger than 61 sovereign countries. Not a lot of people know that.
Good job mate
I lived in Canberra for eight years and many people who lived there for a very long time have told me the reason for Jervis Bay was that in the event of a military conflict they wanted the capacity for a naval port for Canberra
however, at the same time they moved the ACT itself in land because back in 1913 that was out of range of naval gunfire
doesn’t matter these days because of Intercontinental missiles……
And not only that when you buy a house in the ACT you don’t even own the land. The transaction is the same. Everything looks the same on the surface, but you actually are getting a 99 year lease on the land so if the capital Territory wants it back. They can beat you off very easily. …..
Wow.
Interesting comment about intercontinental missiles. I've heard there's underground bunkers / tunnels in Canberra and specifically under the Department of Defence building in Russell. I don't know how true that is but I was under the impression that Canberra was a prime target in the cold war and would have been nuked after pine gap.
@@simonboland not sure about tunnels, but I know for a fact under Parliament house there’s a massive bunker and in Fyshwick which is next door suburb to Symonston where are used to work. There is another building for the Prime Minister and staff to escape to in the event of a conflict, and it’s chockablock full of computers, and high security bomb protection there used to be news articles reporting on it I forget the name of the street
I don’t know if I’ve ever been beaten off by the government but based on house prices, they’ve definitely fucked me.
If the government wants you off a certain piece of land, they can do that anyway, anywhere - and they don't even have to wait 99 years. Owning anything really means no more than the government saying "if someone tries to take it off you, we won't let them". They can make an exception if that someone is the government 😁
Great video mate. As a fellow Victorian I was more surprised to learn that Mildura is north of Wollongong. 😮
I was amazed to find out that the northernmost point of Victoria is around the same latitude as Botany Bay and therefore is more northerly than a significant portion of Sydney's metropolitan area.
Something I’ve been trying to figure out for quite some time and the answer is just here: Adelaide is North of Canberra and Perth is North of Sydney.
In Canada the apparent north-south boundary between the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan is in fact a whole series of jogs about 2km each. Unlike the Australian examples this is the result of careful surveying. Land for settlers was divided into 6 mile squares. That works out fine for the north south dimension, but as one goes north the western edge of the boxes needs to move progressively further west.
The weirdness at the southeast corner of Manitoba, at the north-south borderline with the US, is the subject of many videos. That WAS an error.
At least in Oz the borderlines were never the result of negotiations with break-away revolutionaries.
I grew up in Mt Isa and I remember people saying that our closest state capital was Adelaide (they weren't counting Darwin as a territory capital). Its not true, but it is closer than I thought, Brisbane city is only about 20km closer than Adelaide.
Adelaide is the closest state capital to Darwin. Then Perth, then Brisbane
Mt Isa -> Brisbane = ~1560
Mt Isa -> Adelaide = ~1580
Brisbane -> Adelaide = ~1590
Almost a perfect triangle.
Canberra and ACT is also exactly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne because they were beefing over who gets to be capital
It's closer to Sydney.
Supposedly there is a path from ACT to Jervis Bay to allow ACT civilians to escape if there was a war or something. Also all capital cities needed a port which was bit difficult to do for the ACT. It would have been much better if they put the ACT on the coast, warmer winters, milder summers and not 3hrs drive to go to the beach, but someone was paranoid and needed the states capital to be safe from sea attack or something (or perhaps more sheep were needed?).
The best bit of quackery was the rail gauges from each state were different to avoid states stealing competition some real short sightedness back then.
Another interesting border is Qld - NSW from the Coolongatta/Tweed Heads coast inland. I believe it was designed so that both states got equal share of the watershed from the mountains on the eastern side. And then it follows the dumaresq/macintyre river system from about Texas to Goondiwindi and onto Mungindi.
No, the border was supposed to run East West thru Halfway Creek but NSW basically moved the line north.
Well, the coast from Currumbin Hill down to Coolangatta is effectively in the Tweed Valley, so there's that...
Talking of Mungindi…
About 40 years ago, I was in Narrabri, talking to some locals about my weekend trip to what I pronounced as Mungindee
They laughed and corrected me and said, “No, it’s in NSW, so it’s pronounced with an “eye” sound on the end”
I was confused. But they went on to explain that all the places north of the border, if they end in an “i”, it is pronounced “ee” like Goondiwindi. And everything south of the border in New South Wales, is pronounced “eye”…. like Narrabri, Collarenebri, Quirindi, Boggabri, Wolli Creek, Bondi.
I have no clue whether this is true or not. But I just remember it from when I was a kid.
@@AlphaGeekgirl l was heading towards Narrabri, along the Pilliga, and l was soing 170kph in the Pug Oiler. I thought I'd slow down to 115kph. Glad l did as _Highway_ came the other way
That actually helps me understand a lot why Adelaide and Perth are so much warmer than Melbourne! Never realised they are that far north.
Something that blew my mind a while ago is that the Bourke St Mall in Melbourne is closer to the Murray River than it is to the southern most tip of Mainland Australia. by about 3 kms.
At the end you said "Adelaide is North of Canberra". It should be phrased as "Adelaide is further North than Canberra". The former implies direction, the latter implies position.
Great Video. The only one I already knew was the Jervis Bay one.
i feel like one cannot bring up the existence of the ACT without mentioning it is where it is because Melbourne and Sydney couldnt agree with each other so hard they made a new city in-between for the role of the capital.
It was also done for military reasons, being far from the seas meant it was unable to be bombed or raided.
Some really beautiful country around the WA, NT, SA boarder. And yeas I have been to all these state boarders took 10,000 km to do it.
Very enjoyable video, thanks!
Nice one, love the little fun facts thrown in that Adelaide is north of Canberra and Perth is north of Sydney!
And Adelaide is entirely south of Sydney!
I think that the left-side outline of Australia (2:30) looks a lot like the head of a lioness, especially when the map is tawny colored like the one used in this video.
and the right side is a rabbit....
Surveying mistakes matter in urban/developed areas, but in the outback, its literally just a line in the sand lol
NSW learning they might have to give up hundreds/thousand of square kilometers of sand and rock: 👍
@@Jimizacx yes but the Vic's have to buy NSW Fishing licence to fish in our Murray River. :o)
And the boundary between NSW and Victoria is not the middle of the Murray River. It's the southern bank. The High Court has held (Ward v R, (1980) 142 CLR 308) that the bank is not the waterline as it happens to be from time but rather the top of the southern bank. That was very important to Mr Ward. He standing at the top of the southern bank when he shot and killed mr Reed, who was standing at the waterline, some feet below. Did the crime happen in Victoria or NSW? The High Court held unanimously that Ward had committed no crime in Victoria. Accordingly his conviction and sentence were set aside. It may sound trivial, but to Mr Ward it was not. In Victoria, the mandatory sentence was the death penalty; in NSW, it was life imprisonment.
Wow, never heard about this. Surprised Victoria still had the death sentence in 1980!
@@mikespearwood3914 Left over from the days when Bolte was Premier - he was notoriously in favour of it. A truly nasty man. Ronald Ryan was executed for the murder of a prison guard during an escape. Almost certainly it was not Ryan who had fired the fatal shot and most likely it was fired by another guard whose aim was astray. Any rate, Bolte was asked by a news reporter what he'd been doing t the time Ryan was hanged. His reply - going through the bathroom doing the 3 s-s. Bolte was a terrible man.
That's a bizarre story!
There's some flexibility though. When the NSW / Vic border was closed on new years eve 2020 due to lock down, the next day, my Victorian friends and I boarded a steam cruiser at Echuca. The police didn't care that technically we were entering NSW :-)
It's one of those technicalities that pops up from time to time and can really mean something. It was not just a lawyer's trick. The police were probably not aware of the decision. But Bolte was the epitome of a bad, very bad, Liberal Party politician. @@angelicasmodel
Fun fact: South Australia splits the Murray River with Victoria down the middle, which means that the surveying error gives Victoria partial ownership of the Murray (outside of stuff like oxbow lake shenanigans).
As an Australian, I can confirmation these and some were new to me. Also Jarvis bay has some amazing camping spots and beautiful beaches.
The UK has similar quirks. Edinburgh is West of Bristol. There's also a point- I believe it's Strone Point on the Cowal Peninsula on the River Clyde where a direct line South will hit no land till the North Coast of Spain.
saw a reaction video on my page and decided to do the right thing and go to the original video, sadly most people obviously didn't do this which is sad. But great video, thanks for the entertainment!
The Tasmania-Victoria Land Border reminds me of a small quirk in Canada, Where Newfoundland & Labrador actually shares a border with Nunavut, because there's a tiny island in the far north of Labrador split between the two.
0:09 really missed an opportunity to say “girt by sea” here
What I got out of this: Queensland, you're perfect. Keep doing what you do.
Boundary lines based on longitude are hard. latitude is (relatively) easy, surveyor just use sun-shots. Longitude (per-satellite) require clocks, and a minute is a mile.
Wow New Zealand's Big West Island is interesting for sure.
Love learning more about our beautiful country!
Imagine if those surveyors built a tunnel and dug from opposite ends. You could end up with a 90 degree bend in the middle of the tunnel.
Should sell these facts to organisers of pub trivia nights. Everyone would have their minds blown for example that Tasmania and Victoria share a land border. Everyone just assumes that Victoria's southern border and Tasmania's northern border ends at the coast line and everything else in in Bass strait.
Or two tunnels!
Wow! I had no idea! Gotta luv how Vic said YeahNah... A lot like todays way, Tx for sharing
Can you do the timezones too? Some of them are completely wacky!
IIRC the onset of daylight saving in Iran is determined annually by "a council of clerics". Makes it hard to write software to determine the time there without internet access...
Nearest equivalents I know of in the US…
All of the Northwest Hawaiian island chain (except Midway island, which is a federal territory) is legally part of the city and county of Honolulu. Those (not very inhabited) islands were even part of the Honolulu local phone dialing zone back in the 1990’s. Longest distance local call in the US.
Lots of little border offsets in the straight lines in the US. Many are frozen surveying errors, however some are because sometimes Greenwich longitude was used, and sometimes a system of longitude where zero longitude was defined by some marker point in the middle of Washington DC. (Exactly what zero point they used also changed over the years!) The US longitude system puts integer longitudes about 0.04 degrees West of the Greenwich ones. This is why the Eastern border of New Mexico offsets at the boundary between the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. The survey system changes there. It’s a “make up your mind which you are going to use” error. It is why many North-South US borders are displaced slightly West of where people think they should be.
That long tilted section in the Eastern border of Oklahoma was a result of an Indian nation successfully winning in court. Hey, we don’t care that you claim it’s a mistake now, you are NOT taking back land you promised to us and giving it to Arkansas!
The Oklahoma panhandle was chopped off of Texas. Texas had to give it up in order to legally keep slavery. (Turns out there was a HUGE natural gas field under that strip of land.)
The Southern border of Michigan is a result of two different political compromises clashing with each other.
The border around Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a result of Benjamin Franklin tricking the British…
Canada sometimes did not want to break up already surveyed townships so some tilted Canadian borders have lots of steps in them. Saskatchewan and Manitoba is a good example.
But my favorite is the circular arc at the top of Delaware. How often do politicians decide to set a border with a circle instead of a line?!
I have been to most of these corners including Poepples Corner (SA, QLD, NT) in the Simpson Desert (many times) it was moved from the middle of a dry lake to the correct spot.
Surveyors General Corner ( WA,SA,NT) has the two seperate posts.
The early Suveyors used a fisical Chain to measure & with wear & use the inacuarcies came in.
*physical.
Surveying errors are pretty common. Colorado was supposed to be a rectangle but has numerous small surveying errors all over the border.
Lake Tahoe was supposed to be in Nevada. Now it gets patrolled by the Coast Guard.
Great vid, Bruce
Also South Australia seems to be further north than Victoria and Tasmania. Great video.
Sa used to contain Nt too
Adelaide is directly south of Mount Fuji and further south than the southern-most tip of Africa - the Cape of Good Hope.
@@idjlesjust
"Something for everyone" but one State didn't even get mentioned, and it is the 2nd largest.
Go Queensland Reds 👍.
If the boundary island issue is wierd check the NSW QLD border. Its not the Tweed River. So Coolangatta is a blend of jurisdictions. Council rates, garbage and land tac confusion.. Covid borders were a nightmare when qld closed its border.
My daughter went to visit her in-laws in Queensland during Covid, in Coolangatta they could walk the 20m across the road to change states.
There's a town on the the USA Canada border , the border is the middle of the high street.
The border also goes through the middle of a public library, which begs the question of if one country bans a book would they move it to the other side, in the wrong section.
How did they manage with Coolangatta airport which sits astride the border?
I enjoyed your videos thank you for the upload.
Wow! As a fellow Tasweigan, i did not know about that little rock that sorta gives us direct domicile to Vic! Thanks for that tidbit mate!
Christmas Island is a WA territory but as mentioned is part of NT for federal representation
It is a Federal territory, but some of the duties are handled by the WA government, with the cost going to Canberra.
And Norfolk Island is administered by NSW for some purposes, I believe
Excellent video. I just subscribed to your channel as a result.
There are state lines in the USA like this, too; such as the border between Utah and Colorado. Many of the straight-line borders are slightly wobbly (though you won't see this one maps) because the original survey results were accepted as the legal truth, rather than the "spirit" of them which was following the meridians precisely.
Great video. Thanks
Most people don't realise that any line which follows a parallel of latitude is not straight (other than the equator). The shortest distance between two points on the same parallel of latitude is not along that parallel (again, other than the equator).
Wanna know about funny border regions? Check out Point Roberts, WA in the USA. In order to leave Port Roberts by land, you can to enter Canada and drive for 45 minutes back down to Washington state. The reason is also due to inaccurate surveying.
Other interesting things.
The Guinness Book of World Records says that Los Angeles full name is, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. Translated into English, "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula".
New Zealand was an original state of Australia and is mentioned as much in the Australian constitution.
New Zealand was never a state of Australia or a part of one. It was once part of the Colony of New South Wales before being declared a colony in its own right.
NZ was never a state but was expected (by some) to be. Because of its place in the Constitution, it can become a state by its own choosing and we Aussies would have to accept it. It's also worth noting that around Parliament House the main roads are named after state capitals and there was to be a Wellington Avenue. However, NZ bailed out before the name had been gazetted and it was named Canberra Ave instead.
@@GoodWhinger
AUSTRALIA’S CONSTITUTION
The States shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania,
Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for
the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or
established by the Commonwealth as States; and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called a
State.
Thanks for the deets about overseas territories voting. I always wondered how they were able to vote, but never found an answer.
This is excellent!
I didn't know most of this but absolutely none of it surprises me.
There's some really interesting stuff on this channel, enough to make me tick and subscribe anyway :)
Really interesting facts, thanks
Love love this content.
if they correctally survayed the 141 i would still be considered a south australian
That was cool, thanks!
Super cool! Nice!
It brings to mind the old saying, "Close enough for government work."
technology of theodolites, star books and chronometers of the time. And the lack of a means to do a closing check shot. The reason the borders stand is because it could be changed endlessly with the improvements in technology of GPS and the tectonic shifting of the Australian landmass
Great video👍
I didn't know any of these! Awesome video
not going to lie that last one about Perth being higher then Sydney messed me up i had to go have a look
imagine having your country smaller than a cattle station
Sometime last year I found out about the whole Jervis Bay thing and it blew my mind. I lived in Goulburn for a bit and the capital was only a short drive away, only to end up moving further down the coast and ending up half an hour away from the capital, again. If I ever move state I'll probably end up living somewhere only to find out that the ACT has territory nearby as well. You just can't escape Canberra, god damn.
Nice one👍🏼
"She'll be alright, mate!" Is spot on and most aussie thing ever.
I can see why they kept the Victorian border where it is today. If they had moved it to match the NSW/Sa border then there would have been a bit of Victoria cut off from the rest of the state, directly below where the NSW/SA border hits the Murray, where it currently stands is much cleaner.
This was interesting. I was hoping you where going to touch on why here in Qld there’s a chunk missing on the SW border. Well not missing but why it’s not a 90° corner.
Fun fact. Victoria's northern border was at one point planned to be the Murrumbidgee, which would mean the ACT would straddle the border between VIC and NSW, but NSW had a whinge about it.
And rightly so.... 😝
But of course they (NSW) kept the capital instead of it moving to remain on the border. The ACT being at Albury Wodonga would make far more sense.
Great video
This is great!
The border between Victoria and South Australia is not straight between the coast and the Murray River. Victoria allocated land that was actually in South Australia before federation.
Adelaide being North of Canberra is Australia's equivalent of Edinburgh being west of Liverpool.
(checks map...)
We're going down to Liverpool and doing other things.
And Los Angeles is farther east than Las Vegas.
Interesting. It's even west of Bristol (because so is Liverpool). In fact it seems to be pretty much directly north of Cardiff.
On a similar note, Newcastle is west of Nottingham (and considerably west of London)
@@petuniasevanno it isn't
Through a small surveying error, and a lot of beer, Australia belongs to the US now.
Through a good scuffle, and a lot of intrigue and treaties, America and its holdings now belong to the commonwealth.
@@cjclark2002 BOND!
The US reserves the right to claim any country at any time
@@treyjenkins5672 Except Vietnam
Well, i for one welcome our new overlords