Any Australian who has been through our primary school education system would have immediately been struck by the Daily Mail’s article about the disastrous flooding in Queensland that was published on their website on 30 December, 2010. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the scale of the disaster that would have struck Australian readers, but the addition of a new breakaway state from Queensland displayed on their map of Australia.
Northern Queenslanders have long felt that they need a state of their own that focuses on the needs of the rural and regional communities living in this area. Outspoken independent Bob Katter recently said that Queensland needs to be split to save the region from economic ruin. While many Northern Queenslanders would welcome the splitting of the state across the 22nd parallel south, they would have been just as unimpressed as the rest of Australia with this glaring geographical error.
Capricornia was the name for the proposed state dreamt up by Ian Johnston in his personal campaign for the creation of new states back in 2005.
How did they make such a blunder with a state seven times the size of the United Kingdom? Perhaps they ran a story on the North Queensland secessionist movement at some stage and accidentally used the map that includes the proposed state instead of the current map of Australia.
