On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 06:14:48 -0700, Poor, Edmund W edmund.w.poor@abc.com wrote:
There are seven traditional continents in geography. In no particular order, they are:
...
- Australia (the "island continent")
...
This leaves two issues:
- Where do the various islands go?
I think, generally, they go with the nearest continent, with special treatment given to Australia and its surroundings: since there isn't really a 'continent' nearby (in pedantic terms), but Australia is the largest land mass, the term "Australasia" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasia] is sometimes used to group these as a "continent". In other contexts, "Oceania" is used, although according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania these two terms are sometimes more or less the complement of each other, one including only Australia and New Zealand, while the other includes the lesser islands between there and Asia.
In other words, Australia isn't generally treated as a continent, but part of an imaginary continent that mops up the islands that aren't near enough a real continent to belong. I think everything else is just about near enough to 'belong', although how 'American' some of the more distant mid-oceanic islands would consider themselves, I'm not sure!