ABSTRACT
The Australian urban system is small, simple and dispersed. Although only a handful of cities have more than 250,000 people, two metropolitan areas rank among the top fifty in the world in population terms. The coastal nature of Australian settlement, reflecting the low density use of the central part of the continent, has meant the urban system fringes the country. This can be seen in the pattern of daily direct air services between metropolitan areas (Figure 9.1). The key nodes in the network are Sydney and Melbourne (3 million), Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide (1 million); other places on the daily air network, due to their political role, are Canberra and Hobart, with populations in the range 150,000 to 250,000. The pattern in Figure 9.1 excludes some major industrial cities, and regional cities in Queensland, that also have populations in the 150,000 to 250,000 range. A broadly based introduction to the urban system is provided by Logan et al. (1981).
