Did You Know Australia Is on the Move?

Here’s something you probably don’t think about while enjoying your morning cuppa… Australia is travelling north-northeast!

The Australian continent sits on the Australian tectonic plate, which is moving about 7 centimetres a year towards the north-northeast.

Yep… Australia is moving!

That might not sound like much, but those centimetres really add up:

10 years: ~70 cm 100 years: ~7 metres 1,000 years: ~70 metres 1 million years: ~70 kilometres!

In fact, Geoscience Australia describes the Australian plate as the fastest-moving continental land mass on Earth.

But here’s where things get really interesting…

Australia’s constant movement matters when it comes to high-precision GPS, surveying and mapping.

Your phone doesn’t need to have its GPS “reset” every few years. Instead, scientists and surveyors have to account for the fact that the ground beneath us is continually moving.

Think of it like putting a giant transparent grid over Australia.

If Australia moves several centimetres every year, eventually the ground underneath that grid has shifted. For everyday GPS, you probably wouldn’t notice.

But when you need centimetre-level accuracy, it matters a lot!

Australia’s old GDA94 coordinate system was based on Australia’s position at 1 January 1994.

By 2020, the Australian tectonic plate had moved by up to about 1.8 metres north-northeast relative to that reference.

That’s one of the reasons Australia introduced GDA2020, representing Australia’s position at 1 January 2020 and bringing Australia’s coordinates much closer into alignment with modern global satellite positioning systems.

But Australia doesn’t simply “reset GPS” every few years.

Instead, Australia also has ATRF2014 — a time-dependent reference frame — together with the Australian Plate Motion Model.

These allow highly accurate coordinates to be adjusted for Australia’s continuing movement through time.

Why does this matter?

Because centimetre-level positioning is increasingly important for:

Surveying Construction Agriculture Mining Infrastructure Mapping Transport and navigation

Without accounting for Australia’s movement, datasets collected years apart could potentially be metres out of alignment.

So while you’re standing in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or anywhere else in Australia…

You’re technically travelling north-northeast at roughly the same speed your fingernails grow!

Geoscience Australia actually makes the same comparison — about 7 cm per year, or almost twice the speed of fingernail growth.

Australia really is the Moving Country!