Knowra Australasia Australasia Australasia is a geographic region generally encompassing Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands. Its boundaries vary with historical and disciplinary usage.
Australia : A country and continent in the Southern Hemisphere, comprising the Australian mainland and nearby islands. Australia is the region’s largest landmass and a defining component.
Melanesia : A subregion of Oceania encompassing island groups in the southwestern Pacific, including Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Melanesia classifies many nearby islands separately from Australia and New Zealand.
Charles de Brosses : An eighteenth-century French geographer and writer who introduced the term Australasia in a work on Pacific exploration. His 1756 usage helped establish the name for lands south of Asia.
Australasian biogeography : The study of the distribution and evolutionary history of organisms across Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring regions. Biogeographers define regional boundaries through species distributions rather than a single political map.
New Zealand : An island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, comprising the North Island, South Island, and smaller islands. New Zealand is commonly included in geographic definitions of Australasia.
Micronesia : A subregion of Oceania comprising numerous small islands in the western and central Pacific. Its island groups are generally outside the narrower geographic sense of Australasia.
Terra Australis : A hypothetical southern continent proposed in ancient and early modern geography. The name Australasia echoes the older geographic idea of southern lands.
Australasian realm : A biogeographic realm covering Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, with boundaries distinct from ordinary regional usage. This scientific classification gives Australasia a specific ecological extent.
New Guinea : An island north of Australia, divided between Indonesia and the independent country of Papua New Guinea. Its inclusion in Australasia depends on the definition being used.
Polynesia : A large Pacific region whose island groups include Samoa, Tonga, and the Hawaiian Islands. Polynesia is often treated as a distinct Pacific subregion rather than part of Australasia.
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