We recently bought a Leappad interactive globe. It claims Australia is part of a continent called “Oceana” or “Oceanica”??? What gives? Is this a mistake? - Jinx
a) I thought Micronesia belongs to Asia
b) How much do these experts get paid to decide these things, anyhow???
- Jinx
Oceania is a “continent” the way I am a handsome leading man in blockbuster videos.
It’s a catchall term for the wide assortment of islands in the Pacific and separating the Pacific and Indian Oceans, into which Australia is thrown by those who have a problem with considering it a continent, for whatever reasons they care to come up with. Sometimes synonymous with “Australasia.”
And, of course, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, and allied with Eurasia. :dubious:
Does Australia have a continental shelf like other continents? Are the New Zealand islands on this shelf? What about the other islands – are they? Then it woudl make sense to lump them together on the same continent.
That’s not how I remember it. I must not be *doublethinking * correctly. 
I’ve generally heard *Australasia * used to cover just Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand is geomorphologically quite distinct, consisting of a miniscule fragment of Gondwanaland to which large amounts of volcanic-arc material have been added, and hasn’t been connected to Australia since the Triassic (counting that fragment).
In social geography Australasia is as Cunctator defines it.
In geomorphology it includes Australia (and Tasmania, Bathurst Island, and all the related phenomena), New Guinea, part or all of the Solomon Islands, and a few loose ends at a minimum definition – the stuff that’s part of the Australian Plate.
In some systems of physical geology it’s used as a term synonymous with Oceania, covering Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the particular classifier’s selection of islands.
“Continent” is a fairly arbitrary term – the only way in which the current seven continents can be defined is to (a) set your area minimum at 1,000,000 square km (in order to omit Greenland, and (b) add in a sociological definition to permit separating Europe and Asia, while saying that the others are surrounded by water except perhaps for an isthmus.
Question: are there significant mountain ranges along the Western Australia coast? A definition that describes a continent as a craton lying between two or more cordillera systems paralleling the coasts, along with any adjacent coastal plains, would then work for it – but would have to allow Greenland continent status as well.
:eek: Oh, there are two Bathurst Islands, one in northern Canada, and one off the north coast of Australia. I did not know that, and now I do. Thanks Polycarp.
Probably more than you or I get for doing honest work.
When you get right down to it, the concept of “continents” is a social construct, not a scientific one. It’s really just a convenient way to divide up the earth’s land area into a few large chunks.
There used to be only three: Europe, Asia and Africa - often depicted in a “T” form, with Europe and Asia the horizontal axis, Africa the vertical one, and Jerusalem at the centre where the three intersected. Course, then someone had to go and invent America and mess the whole thing up, and Australia only made matters worse.
Damn. I wanted to be the first one to make the Orwell joke.
Here’s a USGS map wich might be useful.