Country · Oceania
Christmas Island
Territory of Christmas Island
Christmas Island is a territory in Australia and New Zealand. About 1 402 people live there, in an area of 135 square kilometres. Its capital city is Flying Fish Cove.
Picture credit: David Stanley (CC BY 2.0) · David Stanley (CC BY 2.0) · David Stanley (CC BY 2.0) · DIAC images (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Christmas Island?
Christmas Island lies in Australia and New Zealand, on the continent of Oceania.
It sits in the southern half of the world, roughly 1 169 km from the equator.
Its coastline is about 139 km long.
It has no land neighbours — every border it has is with the sea.
How big is Christmas Island?
Christmas Island covers 135 square kilometres.
Luxembourg is about 19 times bigger.
Spread everybody out evenly and you get about 10.4 people on every square kilometre.
That is emptier than the world average of roughly 60 people per square kilometre.
Who lives in Christmas Island?
About 1 402 people live in Christmas Island.
People here speak English.
They pay with the Australian dollar ($).
The land of Christmas Island
Its coast runs for about 139 km. Walking it end to end, at twenty kilometres a day, would take roughly 7 days.
It lies inside the tropics, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes Christmas Island different?
Websites from here often end in .cx.
Christmas Island and the rest of the world
Fewer than one person in every thousand on Earth lives in Christmas Island.
It takes up less than a hundredth of one per cent of all the land in the world.
A country, or a territory?
Christmas Island is not an independent country but a territory. It has its own name, its own borders and often its own laws, but another country speaks for it abroad — it holds no seat of its own at the United Nations, for instance.
That is more common than it sounds. There are dozens of such places around the world: some sit far from the country they belong to, some right beside it. A few govern themselves almost completely and hand over only defence and foreign policy; others are held more closely. How much a territory decides for itself is settled case by case, never by one rule.
On this site territories get a page of their own, because children look them up and because other pages link to them. They are left out of the record lists, though: those rank only members of the United Nations, so that a ranking never mixes countries with places belonging to somebody else.
Nature and animals
Of the animals on this site, one lives wild in Christmas Island: Coconut crab.
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons under free licences — every credit is on the page itself and in the picture credits.
How big is Christmas Island compared with the United States?
- The United States is about 69 427 times as big as Christmas Island: 9 372 610 km² against 135 km².
- The United Kingdom is about 1 799 times as big as Christmas Island: 242 900 km² against 135 km².
Questions children ask
What is the capital of Christmas Island?
The capital of Christmas Island is Flying Fish Cove. It is the city where the country's government works from.
How many people live in Christmas Island?
About 1 402 people live in Christmas Island. (Source: World Bank, 2018.)
How big is Christmas Island?
Christmas Island covers 135 square kilometres. Luxembourg is about 19 times bigger.
Which continent is Christmas Island in?
Christmas Island is in Oceania, in the part called Australia and New Zealand.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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