Is Australasia A Continent?

  • Thread starter Thread starter suirai
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suirai

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Can anyone find anything on the Net that definitively places Australasia as a continent? Or just give me an ISBN number for a book that does the same, if you've got a reference to same.

And I apologize in advance to you folks from New Zealand that don't like this term, Australasia. I'm not meaning to start up a debate on that aspect of the name.



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If i remember correctly from countless tectonic maps, australia and new zealand are actually part of a larger tectonic plate that includes the indian sub-continent.

Could be wrong though, i havnt looked at a tectonic map for a while.
 
What's the matter? Is someone claiming Australia is an island?
 
nurizeko said:
If i remember correctly from countless tectonic maps, australia and new zealand are actually part of a larger tectonic plate that includes the indian sub-continent.
Could be wrong though, i havnt looked at a tectonic map for a while.
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Australia is on a separate tectonic plate:
800pxTectonic_platespng-1.webp
 
Yes, Australia is a continent. Infact even New Zealand is a continent. Albeit a very small one, it's not usually considered in the main continents of the world.
We are too big to be an island, to small to be a real continent.

We (New Zealanders) don't mind being tagged with Australia, we are similar in many ways. Infact NZers can freely move to Australia... live and work without having to get any special visas etc. That's the sort of close nature we tend to have. However....because of these similarities, a lot of rivalries spark between our two nations.
While we have the most picturesque landscapes, Australia has all the hot women. :P

The only thing we get frustrated with is when people think New Zealand is an island of Australia >.>

This might be a handy website... http://artzia.com/Society/Geography/Australia/
 
I was always under the impression that 'Australia' was the country (as in, that large island that's separate from New Zealand and Tasmania and other surrounding islands) and 'Australasia' referred to that whole group (i.e. it includes NZ etc.).....
 
Wrong, new zealand is a chain of islands which by the looks of bossels map, has formed on the fault line between two plates.
It is most certainly not a seperate deal, unless every geography book and geographer ive heard from has been blatantly lying to make a massive cover-up of new zealands continent-hood.

Kinsao said:
I was always under the impression that 'Australia' was the country (as in, that large island that's separate from New Zealand and Tasmania and other surrounding islands) and 'Australasia' referred to that whole group (i.e. it includes NZ etc.).....
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Bingo.

Also cheers for the info Bossel, you saved me having to go alllllll the way upstairs just to get my world atlas (one of them anyway...hey i like maps 😌 )
 
I guess it's just a way of categorizing things.
Like "the middle east", "melanesia", "russian federation" :-)

Continents doesn't really describe anything.
The geography can be similar or different,
the culture can be similar or different,
it doesn't really have anything to with continents.
Though I guess you could say that if you're afraid of earthquakes, being in the middle of a continent is fairly safe. *thinks Africa or South America* :-D
 
Actually we (New Zealand) are what's called a 'micro-continent'.

Continent - Wikipedia

But we are certainly not a separate continent. But we are not an island either, even though we are labelled as the North and South Island. I suppose any smaller and we might end up as island anyway.

Australia is then, a part of the Australasia or Oceania 'continent'
 
Yes, it's a continent! There are seven continents in the world: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. Australia just so happens to be the only one that is also a country. And New Zealand is part of the continent of Australia the same way Madagascar is part of the continent of Africa.
 
Nannou, that wiki article is confusing for newbies and also wrong.

A continent is the landmass of a single tectonic plate, it isnt like calendars or new years or imperial and metric where you can choose different systems, the reality of it is there are only set continents with set boundry's.

Also Though europe is often considored a seperate continent culturally and politically and what-not, it is still very much part of the asian continental plate, hence it is a single continent.

The smaller plates in Bossels image, though seperate plates, are oceanic plates, and arent considored continents, to qualify as a continent you must have a large land mass above water, with continental crust as its called.

Microcontinents

Microcontinents include Madagascar, the Seychelles (the northern Mascarene Plateau), New Zealand, and New Caledonia. Note that volcanic Iceland is an exposed bit of oceanic crust at the mid-ocean ridge, and therefore not a microcontinent.
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New zealand is part of the oceanic/australasian/australian plate, microcontinents are just a cute little imaginary concept, the only reason new zealand exists is because it has formed near the end of the oceanic plate, i cant remember if the oceanic plate is moving into the pacific plate or moving away, either way they are just like every other island chain that forms on or near the edge of a plate edge.
Either by magma and volcanos forming where two crusts are moving away from each other or where one crust is forced under another it is moving into, and pushes the crust of the other plate up at the edge it is moving into.

🙂
 
k3continentsgif-1.webp

ContinentsbigGIF-1.webp


I don't know about the whole "microcontinent" thing, but in school they always taught us that there were 7 continents.

Here's what dictionary.com said...
con·ti·nent1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (knt-nnt)
n.
One of the principal land masses of the earth, usually regarded as including Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.
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nurizeko said:
Though in geographical terms europe and asia are one and the same.
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I don't think that matters in determining where continents begin and end. North and South America are connected. So are Europe, Asia, and Africa. If one were so inclined, you could travel over land from Paris, to Beijing, to Johannesburg. Be a hell of a drive though.
 
A better question would be is Europe a continent? Not it is not. It is a subcontinent like Arabia and India. IMO and according to geographers classification, the 6 continents are;

Eurasia
Africa
North America
South America
Australia
Antarctica
 
Brooker said:
I don't think that matters in determining where continents begin and end. North and South America are connected. So are Europe, Asia, and Africa. If one were so inclined, you could travel over land from Paris, to Beijing, to Johannesburg. Be a hell of a drive though.
Click to expand...

The difference being is to cross from north into south america or from asia into africa is to cross the boundry-lines of a continental plate, while crossing from asia into europe is to still be on the same continental plate, hence the term "Though in geographical terms".

In most other senses europe is indeed a seperate continent, if only because vast expanses of empty space seperate europe from the rest of asia, so it is culturally, racially and historically, a seperate continent from asia.
 
Nurizeko what you say makes sense... after all New Zealand is islands with lots of volcanoes. I always referred to NZ as Australasia or Oceania which would include the Pacific Islands... Samoa, Fiji etc...
 
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