Originally posted by mulberryblueshimmer
Hate to burst your bubble mate but yes it is. Australia is pretty much on a par land mass wise as the USA.

Sorry MBS theres a big difference, possibly because of Alaska. Another possibility is that you are familiar with the Mercator projection map which makes countries appear taller than they really are.

I just did some measuring and its approx. 533 miles or 800 km from Sydney to the SA border. I also worked out that its approximately 2266 miles from Surfers Paradise (been there, awesome place) to Carnarvon,WA; the longest distance between points I could find.

For comparison, there are about 4000 miles between Philadelphia and Nor. California.

Top 5 largest landmasses (km^2):

1. Russian Federation - 16,995,800
2. China - 9,326,410
3. USA - 9,166,600
4. Brazil - 8,456,510
5. Australia - 7,617,930

I live about 90 minutes north of sydeny, AND I have seen actual TV footage on a program here called a Current Affair, this guy took a film crew into the national park, but he blind folded them so that the true location could not be determined...Even if someone went to the National park, they could look for years without finding anything...anyone got some specific map grid locations?...and it might be worth the trip down to take a look.

Hey Neo, I think Inite's figure on the size of the US includes Alaska and Hawaii where as yours doesn't.

OH WOW, I forget one little country like Canada...
Otherwise my figures are more accurate than yours there NEO.

*EDIT: Ok, the truth is I feel like an idiot, geography is my bag, well it's supposed to be. How come there aren't any embarrased emoticons?

[Edited on 12-19-2003 by insite]

as Byrd explained the hyroglyphics are not at all perfect

Hieroglyphic writing was developed only 1800 years ago and we do have good examples of the oldest forms of it. Now, none of us are PhD Egyptologists but you don't need that kind of expertise to be able to look at the rock picture and the real hieroglyphs to see that the forms are wrong and they were drawn by someone who didn't understand anything about the writing. And that lower picture of Set is just dead wrong; something that a worshipper would never do (the shape of the ears are wrong and the shape of the muzzle is wrong and he's not carrying his attributes. But that wouldn't be important to someone scratching out Kewl Graffiti)

I'm not an expert but, in anchient Egypt I presume that there were not many people who were masters in the art of writing hieroglyphs.

Therefor would a Pharo, King or person who orders a voyage to a far and distant land send one of their most valuable "masters of writing" on such a dangerous voyage ?

I think not, so they would maybe send someone who is less experienced in writing which could explain why the Hieroglyphs are wrong or not correct.