How to draw Australia from memory

Three things that go wrong when people sketch Australia

Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.

• Not one straight edge to anchor the shape

  The longest unbroken run in the whole outline is under 8% of the perimeter, and the coast folds back 1.57× on the smooth ring that would wrap it. Choose two deep inlets and one sharp promontory as anchors, and let everything between them stay approximate.

• Both ends are pinched

  The widest slice across the centre is 2.1× broader than either the northern or the southern edge. Place the two narrow ends early and the bulge between them cannot come out wrong.

• Australia is close to square

  Width against height comes out at 1.27 to 1, so the shape neither runs away sideways nor stretches vertically. Set that box first: with a near-square country almost every lost point comes from the coast detail inside it, not the footprint.

Why Australia is scored this way

Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Australia. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Australia small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole eastern edge rather than just handing you a number.

Australia by the numbers

Australia covers 7,692,024 km², which makes it the 6th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 1st largest in Oceania. The capital is Canberra at about 27°S, 133°E, and it sits in Australia and New Zealand. It shares no land border at all, so every metre of the outline you have to draw is coastline.

Next to Australia: regional peers

Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing countries of the same region side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.

Australia compared with nearby countries: area, population, capital and the number of separate outlines the game fills

Country	Area	Population	Capital	Pieces	vs Australia
Australiathis page	7,692,024 km²	25.4 m	Canberra	1	—
New Zealand	270,467 km²	4.9 m	Wellington	2	0.04×
Fiji	18,272 km²	890 k	Suva	4	<0.01×
Kiribati	811 km²	118 k	South Tarawa	14	<0.01×
Marshall Islands	181 km²	59 k	Majuro	5	<0.01×
Micronesia	702 km²	114 k	Palikir	5	<0.01×
Nauru	21 km²	13 k	Yaren	1	<0.01×
Palau	459 km²	18 k	Ngerulmud	2	<0.01×
Papua New Guinea	462,840 km²	8.8 m	Port Moresby	3	0.06×

Draw these next

Countries near Australia share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.

Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of the world and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.

Australia drawing questions