Centre points of Australia

Centre points of Australia are those geographical locations that have been considered to be centre of Australia, as distinct from the extreme points of Australia.

John McDouall Stuart wrote "Sunday, 22 April 1860, Small Gum Creek, under Mount Stuart, Centre of Australia - today I find from my observations of the sun, 111° 00' 30", that I am now camped in the centre of Australia. I have marked a tree and planted the British flag there."

Below are five methods which have been used to locate the centre point of Australia:

In 1988 the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia determined the geographical centre of Australia as a Bicentennial project. A monument was erected to mark the location and named in honour of Dr. Bruce P Lambert, a former Director of the Division of National Mapping, for his achievements in the national survey, levelling and mapping of the continent. Similar to the centre of gravity method, the location was calculated from 24,500 points at the high-water mark of Australia's coastline. The computed result of the 1988 project was:

The median point was calculated as the midpoint between the extremes of latitude and longitude of the continent.

Australia has not seen its population centroid move drastically since the creation of the country. In 1911, the centroid was in central New South Wales; in 1996, it was only slightly further northwest.

Just as there are various ways to calculate the centre of Australia as a whole there are various methods of calculating the centre of the states. However, the Government body responsible for determining such matters, Geoscience Australia, has adopted the following locations as the official centroid for each of the States.

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