What's the most federal electorates you have been to in a day?

A trip from Brisbane to Sydney in one day takes you through about 24 federal divisions.

This is a sequel to How many federal electorates have you visited?  The rules of that article don't count electorates one is just passing through for purely travel purposes, because you're not really visiting them as such.  This one is different.

For this article the challenge is to work out the most electorates you have ever been in in one day, excluding flying.  Any form of being effectively on the ground (or water) counts - driving, rail, walking, cycling, bus, boat if you are sailing through electorates with water boundaries and so on.  Flying doesn't count because flying over 14 extra seats in Sydney because your plane had to go around is just not interesting and unless you're paying insanely close attention to the flight tracker on a flight that has one you won't know which 14 anyway.  However, being on a plane that's on the ground for a stop en route is fine.  I also suggest defining "day" as a calendar day based on the current time in each electorate when passed through, but we could also count continuous trips within a 24 hour time period that don't include any overnight stopping.  

It didn't occur to me until I started looking at possible routes to collect lots of electorates that quite often major highways are electorate boundaries, so what to do about those?  There's no reason generally for the definition of an electorate to state exactly where on a highway the boundary falls, as nobody much lives in the middle of a highway.  I think it's best to count any electorate one travels along the defined road boundary of as a hit, otherwise we get people trying to determine whether their left hand broke the plane of Riverina while swerving to avoid a dead fox on the road, and so on.  (NB in some cases one might nick an electorate on the corner, a common route north-south through western Sydney does this with Fowler).  

As usual there's a question of redistribution vs current boundaries (it seems a little weird to say that one passed through Bullwinkel in 2010 since it didn't exist then) so people can count either the current boundaries or the boundaries at the time of the journey if (and it's a big if) they know what the latter actually were.

A way I've found to look up major journeys on this is to go to the Digital Atlas site, choose Layer and visualise data, choose Basic, click Add Layer, type Division in the search bar and add the electoral divisions layer, and one can also add layers like major roads or rail.  

The most productive route

I think the way quite a few people would be likely to get their highest score would be travelling in one day from Sydney to Brisbane or vice versa (actually, how many people these days do this?).  By my count this scores 24 on a centre to centre basis (typically Brisbane-Griffith-Bonner-Moreton-Rankin-Forde-Fadden-Moncrieff-Wright-McPherson-Richmond-Page-Cowper-Lyne-Paterson-Newcastle (just!)-Hunter-Dobell-Robertson-Berowra-Bradfield-Bennelong-Warringah-Sydney).  It would be easy to add on several at either end while coming from, eg the northern suburbs of Brisbane to the southern or western suburbs of Sydney, and so get into the 30s.  Sydney to Melbourne I get as a base score of only 19.  

Do people actually do Brisbane to Melbourne in one day (bypassing a few Sydney seats and collecting around 38 divisions)?  Apparently yes, a search for people doing it found a post on the Australian Ford Forums (of which I am actually a member, as a result of fallout from a failed false flag troll attack against Chesschat) where someone reported doing it in a Mazda 3 no less.  Might there be someone out there who has actually scored 50 in a day, or more?   

The highest score I can find for myself since age 15 (which I also used as a cutoff in the other article) is a mere 16 electorates, mostly comprising a long-ago train trip from Sydney to Maclean; I believe that day all up included (by present boundaries) Bradfield, Warringah, Sydney, Grayndler, Reid, Bennelong, Berowra, Robertson, Dobell, Hunter, Shortland, Newcastle, Paterson, Lyne, Cowper and Page.

Collect the full set in Tasmania!

One of the things that made me write this article was wondering a few years ago whether I'd ever been in all five Tasmanian electorates in one day.  I've certainly had days where I've been in all except Braddon or all except Franklin, and I think also all except Bass, but I'm actually not sure if I've ever been to all five in one day.

The main reason for this is that I live in Clark.  The main road to Braddon goes through Lyons into Braddon without passing into either Franklin (because it's partly to the south and partly on the wrong side of the river) or Bass (because Launceston is bypassed).  So typically a trip to the north-west for me only scores three. 

It's fairly common that en route to Braddon (or back) I've had reason to divert to one of Franklin or Bass.  For instance the intercity buses used to sometimes go through Launceston (Bass) instead of bypassing it.  Also I've been on trips where the driver detoured via Richmond (and after that through Franklin) on the way back to Hobart for a change of scene or to avoid bad drivers on the Midlands Highway, and sometimes someone might for some reason drive along the eastern side of the river instead of the west.  What I can't remember is if I ever diverted to both on the same day.  

In October 2023 I did fieldwork on King Island (Braddon) where I travelled by vehicle to Launceston (Bass) then flew to King Island.  If I had gone over to the Franklin side of the river on the same day I would have collected all five, but though I was working with colleagues who are based in Franklin, I may have just got a lift directly from Clark, so I doubt I did so.  There have been many other near misses like this.

For a voter living in the western/southern half of Franklin, a trip to Braddon goes through Clark and thus the voter scores all five if they happen to duck into Launceston on the way.  

I doubt many people would have cause to collect the full set in South Australia, but what is the most one would reasonably score? I suspect more than seven would be very unusual?  In WA, I've personally scored ten in one day (O'Connor (Pemberton) to Moore via Forrest) and I imagine one might get one or two more, but not easily more than that.  I expect a fair few ACT residents would at some stage have had cause to go through all three ACT electorates in one day.  And so on.  

One might also collect sets with unusual omissions (most seats in a state without going through a particularly well connected one).  For instance in Tasmania all except Lyons (this might be done by flying from Franklin to Bass then travelling to Braddon or vice versa, but highly unusual!)  I believe I've never done this, and have also never done all except Clark.  

Some other variants could include the most electorates visited by a slower than normal mode of travel (walking, cycling, horse etc).  Oh and I had this question: can you be asleep at the time?  Yes, so long as you're not driving.  

Important Medical Disclaimer

This site does not encourage deliberate record-setting attempts for this feat.