As an Australian I was very surprised to read this post, as Australia is classified as an island AND a continent. I think Mr Webster needs to update his definition.
I’m assuming that this is the article up for discussion
Or this?
Either way these are staff reports, not Cecil columns. Is there a mod who can move this thread?
From dictionary.com
Definition 1 works for Greenland, and definition 2 works for Australia.
I think the distinction is really quite arbitrary though. How big should a landmass be before is should no longer be considered an island? By this definition are Nth and Sth America together not also one really big island?
Isn’t the OP an Aussie? Wouldn’t that tend to undermine your claim that 2 works for Australia?
You’ve locked in on the difficulty that gives rise to the qualifier in definition 1, though: Every landmass on earth is completely surrounded by water.
It always sort of baffled me when folks call Australia an island. It doesn’t feel like an island (well, Tasmania does, but that’s to be expected). It feels like a continent. Because it’s big. Really big. Way bigger than Greenland, despite what your distoted Mercator Projection may lead you to believe. And vast. And geographically diverse–far more so than anything normally called an island. And it’s more or less on its own continental shelf. What more can you ask for? If anything, it seems to have a far better claim to continenthood than Europe, which is only granted such for historical/cultural reasons…
How about adding that “on an island you can see some of the surrounding water from the geographic center or a close tall mountain top”? Would this eliminate Greenland as an island?
Those are pretty silly definitions: “An island is something smaller than a continent; a continent is something larger than an island.”
From a geologist’s perspective, it works like this:
There are two types of crust: thick (20-80 km), sialic Continental crust and thin (3-10 km), mafic Oceanic crust. That’s it. Throw a dart at a map, and it will hit a spot that can be described as overlaying one or the other.
If something is on continental crust, it’s on a continent. It may be a big contient (Asia), it may be a smaller continent (Australia), and it may even be a micro-continent (New Zealand, Madagascar). The smallest thing that might be called a continent by this definition (that I can think of) are the Seychelles (really the Seychelles-Mauritius Plateau).
This definition may also be silly, but at least it’s precise!
Heck, that’d probably eliminate Ireland as an island. It’s a flawed definition, though: Picture a landmass shaped like a figure 8, with two fat lobes on the end and a skinny neck in between. Arrange it right, and you could put the geographical center on that skinny neck, such that you could see the sea from it, no matter how large the lobes are. But then, sea levels rise and cover the neck, and you now have two landmasses, neither of which is an island any more.
I’ve been on islands a few dozen yards across where you can lose sight of the water, for goodness sake!
I'm sorry but could you tell us where you found Australia classified as an island? I could only find references to some referring to it the "Big Island" or the "Island Continent" but not anything that "classifies" Australia as an island.
The continent of Australia also includes the other land masses on it’s continental shelf, therefore is not a single island.
Island vs. Continent is a false dichotomy.
“Continent” is precisely defined, as above. Whether or not something is an “Island” is clearly arbitrary, and although nobody in this thread can agree on how it is defined, most people* seem to think that something with the area of Australia is the boundary: if it is as big or bigger than Australia it is “Not Island”; if it is smaller, then it is “Island”. But “Island” is not the same as “Not Continent”: the Island of Paupa-New Guinea is part of the Australian continent. The Islands of New Zealand and the Seychelles are part of their own micro-continents.
*Note that I don’t care. Debating whether or not a landmass is an island or not is as (geologically) meaningless as debating whether a specific stream is a river or creek.
Apropos of nothing much in particular, during my childhood mega years ago, I always heard Australia referred to by those overseas as the** Island Continent.**
I was taught in high school geography (in the '80s) that Australia was both an island and a continent. Of course, my high school had extremely questionable standards of education, so YMMV.
Perhaps if we could officially lose the ‘island’ tag, folks wouldn’t turn up here on a week’s holiday with plans to drive coast-to-coast? (Not that this isn’t good for a laugh, mind.)
Losing the island tag wouldn’t help … they still come to Canada and expect to drive from coast to coast. LOL
FTR I don’t care either way but the OP was questioning the Staff Report and Webster’s dictionary so I was curious where this island and continent classification came from.
The exact dividing line between continent and island is arbitrary. However, if you have to put it somewhere it makes sense to put it between Australia and Greenland.
Here’s a list of the continents and largest islands with their approximate areas. The figure in parentheses is the ratio between one land mass and the next larger one.
Eurasia = 21,200,000 sq mi
Africa = 11,700,000 sq mi (55% of Eurasia)
North America = 9,400,000 sq mi (80% of Africa)
South America = 6,900,000 sq mi (73% of North America)
Antarctica = 5,400,000 sq mi (78% of South America)
Australia = 3,000,000 sq mi (55% of Antarctica)
Greenland = 840,000 sq mi (28% of Australia)
New Guinea = 306,000 sq mi (36% of Greenland)
Borneo = 280,000 sq mi (91% of New Guinea)
Madagascar = 230,000 sq mi (82% of Borneo)
As you can see, there is a major break in the progression of sizes between Australia and Greenland. All of the continents are at least half the size of the next larger one; Greenland is less than a third the size of Australia.
The problem with this “definition” is that it isn’t actually used by anyone. The Seychelles and New Zealand may be on continental crust, but everyone regards them as islands. New Guinea is on the same block of continental crust as Australia, but they are not considered part of the same continent. Alaska is on the same block of continental crust as parts of Siberia, but is not considered part of Asia. Arabia is essentially part of the African block, and only partly separated from it, but it is considered part of the Asian continent.
It would eliminate nearly all of the world’s larger islands.
A “continent” is not defined in terms of geology. A “continent” is a member of a set of geographic areas defined by usage and custom. Europe as a continent distinct from Asia, and both distinct from Africa, despite the fact that each is connected by land to the other. Australia is a continent because that’s what people decided to call it at the time it was discovered by European explorers. Mostly, I think this is true because there wasn’t another handy continent nearby enough to just consider it attached to, like Greenland is close to North America.
Ha!
I’ve a mind to do it just to spite you.
Google Maps says 1 day, 23 hours driving time from Sydney to Perth- 3,940km.
I, who am happily capable of driving a 12 hour day (and unhappily capable of driving longer), could plan a week’s holiday with a coast to coast trip with four days driving and three days chillin’ like a villain.
Of course, I’d have to fly into one city then home from the other- but you scoffed at the idea of “coast-to-coast” on a week’s holiday, your challenge said nothing of “coast-to-coast-and-back-again”.
Tell you what, you cover my airfare, rental car (or loan me yours), gas, and a modest per diem, and I promise to do the trip then post tales of my adventure in MPSIMS. Deal?
As you noted, the REAL problem is that it we arbitrarily decide that a land mass must be either an “island” (i.e., “minor landmass”) or a “continent” (i.e., “major landmass”) and then we engage in an arbitrary, and largely meaningless, discussion of where we draw the line between them. Your list makes it clear that the obvious dividing line will be either right above, or right below, Australia. So Australia is still either a minor landmass (“island”) or major landmass (“continent”). If I were a splitter, rather than a lumper (and I am a die-hard lumper), I’d say we call Australia a medium landmass (“messo-continent”?)
I am a geologist who works very closely with a lot of geographers. They will gladly take this conversation to it’s next step and, once decided exactly what a continent is, will start arguing where we draw the lines between the “continents”. Some might tell me that New Zealand is part of the “Australian Continent”. Some might allow the existance of a “Polynesian Continent” to which New Zealand is assigned.
My point was this: To provide a partial resolution to this, I provided the perspective of a geologist (me!) who doesn’t have much patience for arbitrary classification schemes. In geology, whether or not something is “continental” is definite. If it’s not “continental”, then it’s “oceanic”, so given that there are, indeed, things called “islands” (of a size TBD–I’d say “smaller than Australia”) it just so happens that there are “continental islands” (New Zealand, etc.) and there are “oceanic islands” (Hawai’i, Tahiti), and there are “oceanic island arcs” (Lesser Antilles) and that about covers it, with no (well, barely any) arbitrary distinction required.
That said, I don’t think I’m going to convince you; years later, I haven’t convinced my geography friends, either! They have their notion of what “continent” means, and I have mine.
And I will concede that you are correct in that my way does result in some absurd continent-assigning. Most of my recent work has been on an island in the Mediterranean (PDF of preprints available via e-mail by request!) that is “in” Europe–Italian is the language, the Euro is the currency–but is definitely “on” Africa. Geographically, it’s European. Geologically, it’s Africa. But it’s terribly, terribly, terribly small and completely surrounded by water–so where ever it is, it sure as hell is an island!