How many federal electorates have you visited?

Map update as of Jan 2024.

When I travel outside my home state I like to pay attention to which federal electorates I'm in at the time.  A few months back I thought it might be fun to try to work out how many federal divisions I had actually visited.  Because I live in Tasmania and do not drive, my score is not as high as it might otherwise be - indeed for a nine-year period covering most of the 1990s I didn't leave Tasmania at all.

For this task I set a couple of ground rules.

Firstly I imposed an age limit - anywhere I went before I turned fifteen doesn't count.  15 is the age from which my travel decisions were generally independent.  Before age ten I travelled around Brisbane and up and down the eastern seaboard with my family a lot, which would add many electorates to this list, but there's no hope of me remembering everywhere I went.  

Secondly, I exclude any electorate I was just passing through (or over) for travel purposes between points outside that electorate and without staying overnight in the process.  Last year I spent three hours in Moscow airport because flying from Baku to Dubai via Moscow was much cheaper than flying there direct and didn't get me home any later, but that doesn't really count as having "been to Russia".  

Applying this second standard gets slipperier than a minister's travel entitlements but the rule I've applied here is to count any marginal cases.  Some people might deliberately drive from A to C through B with the partial aim of enjoying the scenery in B along the drive, and in that case B could be counted.  In my case the view is never much of my reason for going a certain way, so I don't count those examples. (In total there are at least 21 electorates I have passed through for purely travel purposes, which I didn't count.)

On this basis, I count 57 electorates I have visited since age 15.  (If I think of any I have missed I will edit them in):

ACT (2/2 3): Canberra, Fenner Bean

NSW (19/47): Bennelong, Berowra, Calare, Cook, Grayndler, Hughes, Hume, Kingsford-Smith, Macquarie, Mitchell, New England, North Sydney,  Richmond, Riverina, Page, Sydney, Warringah, Wentworth, Whitlam

NT (0/2): (I will go there someday!)

Qld (7/30): Brisbane, Fairfax, Fisher, Griffith, Kennedy, Leichhardt, McPherson

SA (3/1110): Adelaide, Mayo, Sturt

TAS (5/5): Bass, Braddon, Denison Clark, Lyons, Franklin

Vic (17/3738): Batman Cooper, Bruce, Calwell, Casey, Chisholm, Dunkley, Flinders (see Dec 2019 update), Maribyrnong, Melbourne, Melbourne Ports Macnamara, Indi, Jagajaga, Kooyong, La Trobe, Menzies, Scullin, Wills [EDIT: +Aston, before this article was written]

WA (4/16): Canning, Curtin, Fremantle, Perth

(As I visit more electorates they will be updated at the bottom of the article.  Changed division names have been updated in the list above.)

The only really borderline inclusion in the list above is Hughes.  As best I can remember, I've set foot in Hughes only while changing trains at Sutherland station.  The first time I did this I had coffee at a cafe near the station while waiting for the next train to arrive .  That doesn't count.  But on a further trip I got off a train at the same station unnecessarily in order to have coffee at the same place.  

I wonder, does anyone actually visit every electorate?  During federal election campaigns, Prime Ministers and Opposition Leaders crisscross the country visiting several dozen seats, and in a long career as party leader I'd assume a politician would get to visit the great majority of electorates.  But there might be some they'd never visit because they are extremely safe seats that are just too out of the way.  What about others - party officials, AEC managers, perhaps someone involved with Census collection or telecommunications?  Might anyone exist who has actually visited all 150 Australian electorates?

One can passively gain or lose electorates from one's list of visits through redistributions.  So, for instance, until recently Parkes would have been on my list, but the parts of it I've been to have been moved into Calare.  

I also wonder, what would be Australia's least visited electorate? My first thought was that it would probably be a landlocked electorate that isn't in or close to a major population centre (leaving for instance Maranoa, Parkes, New England, Calare, Riverina, Farrer, Murray, Indi and Mallee) but several of those contain well-known areas, so maybe some of the WA electorates might be in the running as well.  I did consider that it might be a Tasmanian electorate too (especially since the Tasmanian seats have small populations), but Tasmania gets a lot of tourism, so maybe not.  Perhaps some electorates on the periphery of large centres (eg McEwen) might also be in contention.

There are probably some electorates - generally the larger ones - where a significant percentage of adult residents have a lifetime electorate total of one.  In inner-city electorates there might be nobody at all - at least not without very serious medical conditions - who spent their whole life in a single electorate.

If anyone wants a go at assembling their own list, the big AEC map at http://www.aec.gov.au/profiles/files/aec-boundary-map-2016.pdf (12 Mb PDF DOWNLOAD) is a good place to start.  Fine-detail maps at http://www.aec.gov.au/profiles/index.htm.

If anyone else finds this an interesting time-killer, scores are welcome in comments!  (Anyone claiming over 120 should probably explain what they were doing in all those places.)

Update (November 2017): Added five more on a visit to WA: Swan, Stirling, O'Connor, Forrest and Moore.  Total now 62.

Update (January 2018): Added 63. Robertson (NSW)

Update (January 2019): Added 64. Corio (Vic)

Update (May 2019): Added 65. Corangamite (Vic).

Update Dec 2019: Phillip Island has been redistributed, which meant I lost Flinders but gained Monash without my total being affected.

Update Jan 2020: Adding some more on a trip to NSW, so 66. Banks (NSW) and 67. Barton (NSW) - for about five minutes each and on very slender pretexts (a road I was walking down to get to a meeting in Cook happened to divide the two electorates but I did cross it back and forth into both to see if there was anything in the shops there that I might want to eat on the way).  Also 68. Newcastle, for most of a day.

Redistribution update July 2021: Gained Fraser (Vic) by redistribution, but also lost Stirling, so still at 68.  

Update Feb 2023: I have just discovered that in January 2016 I was (just) in Aston, however I also lost Calwell in the redistribution.  However I have also noticed Cunningham was inexplicably omitted from this article, so 69.  And I have discovered that the part of Bruce I had visited is now in Hotham.  Plus I have been in Higgins, so 70.

Update Jan 2024: Visited Hindmarsh and Kingston in SA recently, so 72.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The up to date list is:

ACT (2/3): Canberra, Bean

NSW (24/47): Banks, Barton, Bennelong, Berowra, Calare, Cook, Cunningham, Grayndler, Hughes, Hume, Kingsford-Smith, Macquarie, Mitchell, Newcastle, New England, North Sydney,  Richmond, Robertson, Riverina, Page, Sydney, Warringah, Wentworth, Whitlam

Qld (7/30): Brisbane, Fairfax, Fisher, Griffith, Kennedy, Leichhardt, McPherson

SA (5/10): Adelaide, Mayo, Sturt, Hindmarsh, Kingston

TAS (5/5): Bass, Braddon, Clark, Lyons, Franklin

Vic (21/38): Aston, Cooper, Casey, Corio, Corangamite, Chisholm, Dunkley, Fraser, Higgins, Hotham, Maribyrnong, Melbourne,  Macnamara, Menzies, Monash, Indi, Jagajaga, Kooyong, La Trobe,  Scullin, Wills 

WA (8/15): Canning, Curtin, Fremantle, Forrest, Perth, O'Connor, Swan, Moore

Total: 72