I'd definitely lean towards agreeing with you there. And on top of that, I live on the west coast of Australia, and there are people living fine from Albany (at the bottom) to Broome (at the top), but there's probably only 5% of the coast that has people living on it - scattered from top to bottom (but obviously mostly in Perth). Seems like there's a lot of empty space here. I have relatives that live in-land (in the "wheat belt"), and the climate is perfectly livable there. I think the only places where it is not-so-livable is in places like Marble Bar (second hottest place in WA), and yet there are still a bunch of people that live there - my friend grew up there.

Have a look at some of the sample pictures here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outback

and particularly, about a third of the way down, the aerial photography and the arid interior, and consider that that arid desert extends from the equivalent of Oregon to Tennessee, South Dakota to Oklahoma.

According to the World Bank, Australia gets almost as much rain as the United States.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.PRCP.MM?end=2014...