Author: Jethrow (---.145.13)
Date: 09-09-2005 00:37
I am lucky, living in Australia, as our country takes up our whole continent and all our borders are in the ocean. As well, State boundaries have virtually no physical demarcations other than border quarantine posts (with the obvious exception of Tasmania which is an island-State). Huge tracts of Aust are flat and arid, with hardly any geographical or ecological landmarks to provide some clue as to where a person is.
I live in Perth, the capitol of the State of Western Australia, and if I drive 350km east I hit the Nullarbor Plain, a completely flat treeless desert more than 1000km wide. The same distance N or NW brings me to the edge of arid country that eventually turns into one of the world's most inhospitable regions, covering more than a quarter of the continent.
I understand that large parts of Russia, Canada and East Asia are similarly uniform over vast distances. It must be much easier to recognise an approaching border when the border is a physical barrier such as a big river, or as is the case in some places, a fence, wall or demilitarized zone.
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