Also known as the continent of Australia (not to be confused with the individual country which is a part of it), Oceania is Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It's a political continent rather than a geographic one, because it's not a huge landmass but a collection of atolls and islands. To confuse the terminology further, Oceania is often considered part of the Asian region (but not the continent), and is often grouped with South Asia and The Far East as the Asia-Pacific.
The islands are divided in three zones: Melanesia being the islands north and northwest of Australia (the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia); Micronesia, the micro-islands north of Melanesia (Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, etc.) and Polynesia, with a lot of islands (New Zealand, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, Cook Islands, Easter Island (part of the Chilean Valparaíso region), the US state of Hawai'i, French Polynesia, etc.).
You might also hear the term Australasia (literally "south of Asia"), this being Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea (the whole island) and some neighbor islands, including some of Indonesia. Sometimes Australasia is used the same way as 'trans-Tasman' to refer to Australia and New Zealand alone, as seen in the region list below.
Regarding tropes, there are few of them here. Why? The islands have achieved independence only in The '70s and The '80s. With the exception of the biggest threenote , every single country here has less than a million people, and most have less than 200,000. In fact, Oceania is the second-least populated continent on Earth after Antarctica and has the lowest population of the permanently inhabited continents, housing only 38 million inhabitants (in comparison, South America, the third-least populated continent, has 422 million inhabitants).
This is made complicated by how poorly understood and recorded the history of the region has been until about the 1500s and especially the 1800s and how rugged the terrain is. Almost all of the major populations in the region are colonial settlers of one form or another (whether the British, French, Dutch, Germans, Japanese, and Americans of relatively recent, or the more ancient Polynesian and Australasian peoples and Aborigines who first either crossed into the region on foot during low water or sailed epic distances on long distance wooden ships), and literacy was either sparse or utterly nonexistent until a few centuries ago, and still lags behind (especially on many of the larger, poorer mapped areas like New Guinea), leaving us to make due with archaeology and analysis of monuments and oral traditions. This is a great tragedy, because many of the great stories and histories of the region and its peoples will never be known. However, there have been serious efforts to remedy this.
Most Western and Asian media tend to focus on a few subjects: The Age of Exploration (where Zheng He is said to have had some of his ships explore the region, but almost no evidence has been found one way or the other, and where European settlers came in), the unification (and sometimes downfall) of several early colonies and states like Australia and the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Do not confuse with Oceania from Nineteen Eighty-Four, which comprises mutually exclusive territories.
Also see Pacific Islanders in Media.
Countries
Australasia
- Australia (sometimes considered to be a continent by itself)
- New Zealand (also considered to be part of Polynesia)
Polynesia
Melanesia
Micronesia
Dependencies
Polynesia
- American Samoa (Belongs to the United States)
- Cook Islands (Self-governing country in free association with New Zealand)
- French Polynesia (Belongs to France)
- Niue (Self-governing country in free association with New Zealand)
- Norfolk Island (Belongs to Australia)
- Pitcairn Islands (Belongs to the United Kingdom)
- Tokelau (Belongs to New Zealand)
- Wallis and Futuna (Belongs to France)
Melanesia
- New Caledonia (Belongs to France)
Micronesia
- Guam (Belongs to the United States)
- Northern Mariana Islands (Belongs to the United States)
Defunct countries, empires, kingdoms, and so on
Useful Notes and other articles related to Oceanians and Oceanian culture
Oceania in General
- Australian Rules Football
- Clamshell Currency
- Creators of Pacific Islands Descent
- Developing Nations Lack Cities (the Pacific Islands)
- English Language
- Forces with Firepower
- Aussies with Artillery (Australian military)
- Kiwis with Carbines (New Zealand military)
- Gratuitous Foreign Language
- Hungry Jungle
- Jungle Warfare
- Malicious Monitor Lizard
- National Stereotypes
- Pacific Islanders in Media
- Pacific Mythology
- School Systems
- Storming the Beaches
- Tropical Epilogue
- Tropical Island Adventure
- Umbrella Drink
- Western Animation
- Western Terrorists
- World War I
- World War II
Australasia
See Australia for everything solely related to Australia- Aboriginal Australian Myths
- Angry White Man
- Australian Cuisine
- Australian New Wave
- Australian Wildlife
- Awesome Aussie
- Battle Boomerang
- The Bogan
- Boxing Kangaroo
- The Emu War
- Eureka Rebellion
- Fake Australian
- First Australians
- Flynning
- High Koala-ty Cuteness
- Intimidating White Presence
- Kangaroo Pouch Ride
- Kangaroos Represent Australia
- Jungles Sound Like Kookaburras
- Laid-Back Koala
- Land Down Under
- Monstrous Seal
- Puzzling Platypus
- Sentenced to Down Under
- Settling the Frontier
- Shiny New Australia
- Sluggish Seal
- Sweet Seal
- Volatile Tasmanian Devil
- The West
- Wintry Auroral Sky
- Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My
