Exactly how big IS this place?

The States and Territories of Australia are New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territories, Australian Capital Territory (ACT) (basically Canberra), and Western Australia.

Oh, and Tasmania, too, but we always forget them because they're not attached to the main continent.  And that infuriates them to no end.

I've mentioned before that the state of Western Australia (they didn't strain themselves thinking up a name, did they?) occupies nearly 2% of the Earth's land area.  Just how big is that?

WA could hold three and a half Texases.  Texans also outnumber Western Australians 11 to 1, so by our standards, the Lone Star state is a pretty crowded place.

California fits into WA six and a quarter times, and there are 16 Californicators for every West Australian.  I'm pretty sure that's what they're calling themselves these days. But I don't watch the news much, so I could be wrong.

Arizona or Nevada would both fit into WA 8 or 9 times, but only Nevada has a similar population (2.6 million versus 2.3 million in WA). It has other odd similarities, too.

While there are roughly four New Jersey-ites for every one West Australian, we could fit that teeny, tiny weeny little state inside WA 132 times.  One hundred and thirty two New Jerseys!

But we're not going to do that.  Because then there would be 1.14 BILLION New Jersey-ites, and a fine mess that would be.