Australia

Six states and two territories

Australia is the only country that's also a continent, and its eight states and territories are a manageable checklist with an enormous amount of ground in between. Most visitors land in Sydney or Melbourne and see New South Wales and Victoria; Queensland follows for the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast. That's three of eight, and it's roughly where most overseas trips end.

The rest takes commitment. Western Australia on its own is larger than Western Europe, and Perth is closer to Jakarta than to Sydney. The Northern Territory means Uluru and Kakadu, usually a flight to Alice Springs or Darwin. Tasmania is a short hop from Melbourne and well worth the detour for Cradle Mountain and Hobart's MONA. The Australian Capital Territory is the easy one — Canberra is three hours' drive from Sydney, and the capital's museums and Parliament House make a respectable day trip.

The Big Lap

Australians have a name for the trip that finishes this map: the Big Lap, a circuit of the continent on Highway 1 that runs close to 15,000 kilometers and typically takes months in a campervan. You don't have to do it all at once — plenty of people collect the states over a decade of holidays — but if you ever get the chance to drive the Nullarbor or the Stuart Highway, take it. Jervis Bay Territory, a small federal enclave on the New South Wales coast, isn't on the map; it's administered with the ACT and is too small to click at this scale.

Distances that surprise people

Sydney to Perth is the same distance as London to Moscow. Darwin is closer to Singapore than to Sydney. Those are the numbers that catch first-time visitors out, and they're why most overseas trips only manage two or three states. The practical answer is flying between regions and driving within them: Melbourne to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road, Brisbane up the coast to Cairns, a Red Centre loop out of Alice Springs. Tasmania and the ACT are the easy adds — a quick flight from Melbourne, a half-day drive from Sydney — and the ones that get a map to six of eight without much effort.