What was Australia's population when you were in school?

It's funny how some things just stick in your head from your school years - even when you are well aware that things have changed since.

Personally, the figure "16 million" always pops first to mind when Australia's population is mentioned.

How about you?

I thought 18 million then I looked it up, 14.5 when I started and 17 when I left

I looked it up on here

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/population-growth-rate#:~:text=Australia%20-%20Historical%20Population%20Growth%20Rate%20Data%20,%20%201.28%%20%2068%20more%20rows

Oh I just remembered, I used to be totally obsessed with this book growing up - the little aussie fact book

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/892842.The_Little_Aussie_Fact_Book

When i started school it was 9.5m, when i finished it was 12.5m.

Funny, you're right, had to look up the first one, but always remembered the figure of around 12.5 m from last years of secondary.

I recall 18 million from school days. Looking it up that would’ve been late primary school. I just googled the current population and was surprised, I thought it was closer to 30 million now

I remember it being around 14 million. It was nice.

It's funny how some things just stick in your head from your school years - even when you are well aware that things have changed since.

Personally, the figure "16 million" always pops first to mind when Australia's population is mentioned.

How about you?

I think you must be about the same age as me because I had 16 million in my head too.

Just looked it up, and apparently it was 17.2 million the year I did Year 12.

About 11.5 million when I started school and 14.5 million when I finished

I think over in Perth the population is about 1.5 times what is was when I was in high school. The traffic increase is very noticeable as I don't think (with the exception of the Mandurah line) the public transport has increased in line. Hopefully current projects go some way to eleviating this.

And let's not mention hospitals! One new major hospital (Fiona Stanley) and a new children's Hospital replacing the old one. It think there have been some new secondary hospitals, but wait times have supposedly ballooned with a lot more ramping.

I am not against population growth, but the planning and infrastructure has not kept pace. The urban sprawl is horrific. Surely a satellite city system, or more regional development would have been better. At the moment we just seem to keep building out and out with longer freeways....

Sorry for the rant.

I remember it being 15 million when I was in primary school (mid-80s).

Another 10 million since then. Where does it end!

I have 16 million stuck in my head as well, from when I was 12.

In high school there was a funny tagline going around: "Five billion people and still no date!"

I've always had 14M stuck in my head and i accessed that link and it was 14M the whole of high school years. No wonder i had that number in my head. It was almost/about 15M at the end so that was slow growth during that period!

I suppose it was close to 40 years ago but we do seem to really jumped since the mid 80s.

10 million came to mind but I checked. It was around 12 million when I started school and over 14 million when I left.