In all seriousness, I am ashamed to ask, what is Australia classified as. At school I was taught it was a continent and island. Then island was dropped to being the smallest continent. Since being here, I have avoided this area for sometime as I was flooded with correction notices. Some say it is a continent, some say not. Some say it is part of the Oceanic area others say Australiasia. I have read the government info sheets and printed this year and they say Australia is a continent, John Howard agrees with this. So what is Australia, a continent or not and which area do we fall under, Oceanic or Australasia and is that the continent?

Auszev, I was taught that it was both an island and a continent- as a matter of fact, the expression used was (is) the Island Continent.
Conventional wisdom seems to be to not refer to us as an island- I cannot understand the reasoning behind this. I think it is one of those 'depends who you ask' type of questions, with no clearly defined answer. However, we are still very definitely a continent!

Similarly with the question of what 'area' we belong to- Australasia to me means Australia, NZ, PNG, and all our island possessions, whilst Oceania would infer something much larger- perhaps half of the Pacific Ocean would be included- again, a real grey area.

I know I did not really answer your question, but I do not think anyone could give you something cut and dried.

Isn't there a sense in which all the continents except Europe and Asia are islands?

Quote:

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John Howard agrees with this

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Yeah, but he agrees with some pretty crazy ideas.

Good question. I always thought that the continent was really called Austalasia and came along with our near neighbours - New Zealand for instance has to belong to one continent or another. Mmmm, okay I admit it - I have no idea.

We had a similar discussion some time ago here, but I don't think we got anywhere.

Quote from a Bacardi Rum comercial on Australian TV a few years ago:

"Australia... World's... Largest... Island."

Res ipsa loquitur. The good people at Bacardi would never lie to us, would they?

Thanks all, I am still not the wiser in what and where we live, but I sure feel better that I am not the only one. Obviously the Barcardi people know, what does Foster's say?