Apropos of a set of German TV documentary shows called “Terra Australis” (my wife’s still watching it) I had a “statistics freak” attack (I have delved into the arcana of baseball too deeply – it’s incurable). Comparing Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin, our largest city at 3.7 million inhabitants and 892 km² (though our largest urban agglomeration is the Ruhr area with about 10 million).
Seems an attempt at comparison is futile, as the organization of local government units is too different. But what caused me to do an “Eh, wot?!?” double-take appropriate to our site was a little detail in the list of names of the local government areas of Greater Melbourne: of the 31 units, 27 are called “city” – and 4 are called "shire". So that’s where all the Hobbits have gotten off to!
