Australasia is the area that includes Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the many smaller islands in the vicinity, most of which are the eastern part of Indonesia. The name was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756). He derived it from the Latin for "south of Asia" and differentiated the area from Polynesia and the southeast Pacific (Magellanica). Australasia is sometimes used as a term for Australia and New Zealand alone, in the absence of another word limited to those two countries.
From political and cultural perspectives, the word has little utility, as although Australia and New Zealand are both relatively wealthy, predominantly English-speaking countries and alike in many ways, they share little in common with the other nations in the area.
From a biological point of view, however, Australasia is a distinct region with a common evolutionary history and a great many unique plants and animals, some of them common to the entire area, others specific to particular parts but sharing a common ancestry.
The biological dividing line from Asia is the Wallace line, which represents the boundary between the two continental plates. Sulawesi and Lombok lie on the eastern, Australasian side of the line and Borneo and Bali lie on the western, Asian side.
Australasian Olympic Flag
In the past, Australasia has been used as a name for a combined Australia and New Zealand team. Examples include tennis between 1905 and 1913, when Australia and New Zealand combined its best players to compete in the Davis Cup international tournament (and in fact won it in the years 1907, 1908, 1909 and 1911), and at the Olympic Games of 1908 and 1912.
See also
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasia under GFDL
