It was British captain James Cook who first made voyage to the country in the 1770s. In 1778 captain Arthur Phillip unlocked Australia to the world. The present day boundary of Australia was delimited only in 1861.

Landscape

It was only after protected negotiations that the Commonwealth of Australia comprising New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania came into being in 1901. The federation of Australia chiefly comprises these 6 states and two federal territories, the northern territory and the Australian capital territory of Canberra.

The term Oceania is used to denote the widely scattered islands of the central south Pacific; Australia and New Zealand are also frequently included in Oceania. The total population of Oceania was 31 million in 2001. Virtually, all the islands of the Oceania are either volcanic peaks or tiny coralline atolls built on submerged volcanic bases. Some of the islands such as New Guinea are sizeable land areas having snowcapped peaks as high as 5,000 m.

The continent of Australia, however, shows no evidence of recent volcanism. Except for New Zealand and part of Australia, the whole of Oceania lies well within the tropics and enjoys continuous warm temperatures. The annual rainfall in Oceania may reach 400 cm in some locations. Two-thirds of Australia, a number of equatorial atolls and the leeward sides of mountainous islands tend to be arid.

Oceania consists of:

• Australia and New Zealand,
• Melanesia,
• Micronesia, and
• Polynesia.

Both Australia and New Zealand have minorities of indigenous inhabitants. The native Australian people are known as ‘aboriginals’, their population is about 260,000, living mainly in the tropical north and in the arid and semi-arid areas of the country. In New Zealand, the dominant indigenous group is Maori – a Polynesian people. They are concentrated in the Northern Island. Maoris at present constitute about 10 per cent of the total population of the country and their population is growing at a faster rate.

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