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Australasia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising Australia, New Zealand (overlapping with Polynesia), and sometimes including New Guinea and surrounding islands (overlapping with Melanesia). The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically , physiogeographically , philologically , and ecologically , where the term ...
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, [17] is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. [18] Australia has a total area of 7,688,287 km 2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania .
The name Australia has been applied to two continents. Originally, it was applied to the south polar continent, or sixth continent, now known as Antarctica.The name is a shortened form of Terra Australis which was one of the names given to the imagined (but undiscovered) land mass that was thought to surround the south pole.
Regarding Australia and the Pacific, Chambers's New Handy Volume American Encyclopædia observed in 1885 that, "the whole region has sometimes been called Oceania, and sometimes Australasia—generally, however, in modern times, to the exclusion of the islands in the [Malay] archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malesia."
Australasia on a map. The term Down Under is a colloquialism differently construed to refer to Australia and New Zealand, or the Pacific island countries collectively. [1] [2] The term originally referred solely to Australia and gradually expanded in scope.
The Greek language press began in Australia and in 1913, Australia had the first Greek weekly newspaper called Afstralia that was published in Melbourne. [11] Anna Perivolaris was a leading organiser of Greek culture in Sydney in the 1920s until she was head hunted to organise a Greek after school club in Perth. [12]
The Commonwealth of Australia comprises the mainland of the Australian continent, the major island of Tasmania, other nearby islands, and various external territories. [1] Neighbouring countries are Indonesia , East Timor , and Papua New Guinea to the north, the Solomon Islands , Vanuatu , and New Caledonia to the north-east, and New Zealand to ...
Climate map of Australia. By far the largest part of Australia is arid or semi-arid. A total of 18% of Australia's mainland consists of named deserts, [20] while additional areas are considered to have a desert climate based on low rainfall and high temperature. Only the south-east and south-west corners have a temperate climate and moderately ...