Southern Oceania encompasses Eastern East Antarctica, Tasmania, New Zealand’s South Island (including its southern coast), and Australia, extending northward to the continent’s Top End and Cape York Peninsula.
The term Australasia (French: Australasie) was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756). Derived from Latin, meaning "south of Asia," the term was intended to distinguish this region from Polynesia (to the east) and the southeastern Pacific (Magellanica).
Southern Oceania’s southwestern boundary divides East Antarctica into its Western and Eastern subregions, running from the South Pole to the Kerguelen Islands. These islands, among the most remote on Earth, form part of the Kerguelen Plateau, a vast igneous geological province largely submerged beneath the southern Indian Ocean.
The French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Terres australes et antarctiques françaises)—which include Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands, and France’s Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean—are administered as a separate district.
The southeastern boundary runs a little north of the Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand’s South Island—sometimes called the "mainland"—from the smaller yet more populous North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui).
The northern boundary divides Southern Oceania from The Far East, to which Australia’s tropical north belongs.
HistoryAtlas contains 569 entries for Southern Oceania from the Paleolithic period to 1899.
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