Coastline Lengths
Australia is the sixth largest country in the world and is the only one of the top six completely surrounded by water. The mainland and Tasmania also are surrounded by many thousands of small fringing islands and numerous larger ones. Almost 40 per cent of the total coastline length comprises island coastlines. As an island nation, coastlines play an important role in defining National, State and Territory boundaries
Calculations on Australia's coastline lengths are taken from Geoscience Australia's GEODATA Coast 100K 2004 database. The coastline data is nationally uniform, is sourced primarily from the 1:100 000 scale National Topographic Map Series and is the most authoritative data currently available on the length of the entire Australian coastline and the State and Territory coastlines as described in the Maritime Boundary Definitions.
| STATE/TERRITORY | (kilometres) | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| MAINLAND LENGTH | ISLAND LENGTH | TOTAL LENGTH | |
| Western Australia | 12 889 | 7892 | 20 781 |
| Queensland | 6973 | 6374 | 13 347 |
| Northern Territory | 5437 | 5516 | 10 953 |
| South Australia | 3816 | 1251 | 5067 |
| Tasmania | 2833 | 2049 | 4882 |
| Victoria | 1868 | 644 | 2512 |
| New South Wales | 2007 | 130 | 2137 |
| Jervis Bay Territory | 54 | 3 | 57 |
| AUSTRALIA | 35 877 | 23 859 | 59 736 |
Topic contact: education@ga.gov.au Last updated: November 18, 2010
