Down Under

<< At some point, I actually thought people in Australia walked around like this. Minus the bucket of course

I wonder how long that picture of the guy in the beanie is gonna be on the login screen. Sorry, thinking out loud. Today was one of those occasions when I dug a genuinely interesting nugget of fact from the coalface of desperation. I began by reading an article on scenic train journeys (Clapham Junction to Twickenham is a doozy, but I've got to keep up with the competition) and read that the Auckland-Wellington line in New Zealand 'runs between the country's administrative and economic capitals'. Two capitals, I thought, that doesn't sound right. Indeed, it's not (although we'll assume that Auckland's status as as economic capital is figurative), but I still hadn't learned anything.

For my next trick, I decided to pay my annual visit to Google Earth, the most pointless piece of brilliance in all the world, to see if New Zealand really is on the other side of the world. I actually sat and worked it out, using the co-ordinates and everything. The things I'll do to avoid washing up. Well, it turns out that the Antipodes Islands are almost directly opposite the UK (I measured it from London, M25-centric infidel that I am), hence the name - because:

The word 'antipodes', commonly used to describe Australia and New Zealand, means 'the other side of the world'.

The Antipodes Islands are the closest land mass to the antipodal point on the globe to Greenwich. Their antipodal point is actually a few kilometres east of Cherbourg, in France (OK, I sense you're losing interest). Have a look at some snazzy maps while I wipe my fevered brow. This shows the eastern hemisphere's antipodal points, and consequently those of the western hemisphere. What's incredible is how little the continents overlap - there are very few cities or landmarks that are antipodal to each other (the only virtually exact example of two cities I've actually heard of is Hamilton in New Zealand and Cordoba in Spain). America fills the Southern Ocean, Australia the Caribbean and the entire mass of continental Europe, Africa and Asia very nearly fits into the Pacific. Pretty freaky, man.

Of course, the fact that we refer to Australia and New Zealand as Antipodean, or Down Under (Australia's name even means southern) is pretty disparaging - who's to say that, as this map suggests, it's us on the bottom and them on the top. Maybe not - Australia beats us at every sport, we need to at least win the map battle.