" 
 ::Well, good faith was assumed, I certainly did not want to accuse anyone of intentionally trying to belittle a country. And I don't know how I earned that ""racial undertones"" remark. However, I may indeed have reacted somewhat allergically. So I'll try again: I think the sentence - as it was - was firstly giving an irrelevant piece of information and secondly had the potential to unintentionally irritate (as it did with me) or even insult readers. Imagine someone from East Timor getting the impression that the authors of the article regard their ""small"" country as so obscure that its geographical situation is best explained relative to Darwin, Australia. They might then develop feelings similar to those that led me to produce my ""rant"". That's why I removed it and hope that somebody with greater expertise on the subject than me may come up with a better description. Better? ;)   "