Question

Why Australia is scarcely populated?

Answer 1

here's the main reason


Australia is largely inhospitable desert. The reason the outback regions are so sparsely populated is also because there is little resources there to sustain large populations. They need water, food and some kind of industry to sustain them. Most outback cities are centred around mining (Broken Hill, Mt Isa) or tourism / livestock ranching (Alice Springs). People often under estimate just how vast Australia really is. It is about 4000 km coast to coast. The distance from Cairns to Sydney is almost as far as it is from Sydney to Perth. The distances required to cart water to potential inland cities could be more than a thousand kilometres or more. It would be unfeasable and extremely costly to pump water that distance. Australia is also the oldest continent. Its soils are are worn, sometimes fragile (prone to desalination, and loss of top soil) and often of a poor quality for raising farms. The best lands are on the coastal fringe around the edges of the continent. These lands are operating at capacity now. The people that know these things have already advised that Australia has a population right now that is twice that which is actually sustainable with the resources here.