Geography is the other side of the world
Also known as antipodes
Listen
Watch
🎙️ Listen on other apps: https://linktr.ee/geographyiseverything
📽️ YouTube: @GeographyByGeoff
📷 Socials: https://linktr.ee/geographybygeoff
📖 Check out Hunter's atlas' here: https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=hunter+shobe
We live on a spherical planet and because of that, in theory, you could drill a hole straight through and end up on the opposite side of wherever you are. However, because of the unique way how planet's landmasses have moved around, where you end up could be wildly different from where you started. In today's episode, we explore the geographic concept of antipodes.
There is a rather extensive discussion of the remote Kerguelen archipelago (which includes the Australian-owned Heard & McDonald Islands, not mentioned in the episode), especially as a near-antipode to the North American West Coast. I want to point out that those islands are part of a much larger area, mostly to the south but a bit to the north as well, that's a sunken mini-continent called the Kerguelen Plateau.
If things had happened differently in prehistory with the geology, it's quite possible that not as much of the Kerguelen Plateau would have sunk. Most realistically, I see there being a large northern island called Kerguelen that would be a French overseas collectivity (the same status as French Polynesia) and would be a francophone Iceland of sorts, with 300,000 or so people - mostly white and with ancestry from France (including the Basque Country) - mainly concentrated in the island's northern end (the part having a moderate climate). The smaller southern islands, which would be Australian-owned (and originally British-owned), would be far less inhabited by humans and would be a Svalbard of sorts; called the Desolation Islands, two of the main islands would be called Heard and McDonald.
One other thing to point out: In French, it's spelled Kerguélen (with the accent in the second "e"), and pronounced care-gay-lahn or care-gay-lohn (the "n" being silent).