Oceania

Atlases divide Oceania into four subregions. Australasia centres on Australia and New Zealand. Melanesia runs from New Guinea, shared by Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, east through the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to Fiji. Micronesia, in the western Pacific, includes Palau, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Kiribati. Polynesia spreads across the central and eastern Pacific and takes in Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Hawaii and Rapa Nui. Only Australia is of continental scale, with a dry interior, the Great Dividing Range along the east coast and the Murray–Darling river system in the south-east. New Zealand is mountainous, with the Southern Alps running down the South Island. Elsewhere you find volcanic islands, raised limestone and coral atolls. Fourteen sovereign states sit alongside territories tied to France, the United States, New Zealand and Chile. Distances are the defining feature: neighbouring island groups can be hours apart by air.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years. At Murujuga in Western Australia, a World Heritage cultural landscape, cliff faces carry more than a million petroglyphs, some thought to be up to 50,000 years old. Seafaring peoples later settled the Pacific islands over many centuries. On Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, Nan Madol is a group of more than 100 artificial islets of basalt and coral, inscribed by UNESCO in 2016. Rapa Nui, which belongs to Chile, has 887 moai within its national park. European contact came with explorers and then colonisation: Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia, belongs to the listed Australian Convict Sites, and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in New Zealand mark the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Māori chiefs and the Crown. Chief Roi Mata's Domain on Efate, Vanuatu, is also World Heritage listed.

Long-haul traffic funnels through a few hubs: Sydney (SYD), Melbourne (MEL), Brisbane (BNE), Auckland (AKL), Nadi (NAN) in Fiji and Honolulu (HNL) in Hawaii. Nadi is described as a regional hub for the South Pacific, and many onward services to Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and other islands are routed through Fiji, Auckland or Brisbane. Port Moresby (POM) links Papua New Guinea, where many towns are not joined by road and flying is routine. In the north-west Pacific, Guam (GUM) is the main gateway for Micronesia. There is no international rail network, and passenger ferries between countries are rare, so crossing from one nation to the next is usually a flight. Even within Australia, crossing between Perth and the east coast is a multi-hour flight rather than a drive. In New Zealand, ferries cross Cook Strait between the two main islands. In Australia and New Zealand, roads and domestic flights both work well; elsewhere, check which islands have scheduled flights.

Australia and New Zealand follow Southern Hemisphere seasons: summer runs December to February and winter June to August. Southern Australia and New Zealand suit December to March for beaches and walking, while skiing is a winter activity. In northern Australia, around Darwin and Cairns, the wet season runs roughly November to April, with monsoon rain and cyclone risk; May to October is the dry season. The South Pacific islands, including Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and French Polynesia, are generally drier from May to October and wetter, with cyclones possible, from November to April. Papua New Guinea varies by region. Micronesia and Guam are warm all year, and north-west Pacific typhoons are most frequent in the second half of the year. Hawaii is drier from roughly April to October. Christmas and New Year, Easter and the July school holidays mean fuller flights in Australia and New Zealand.

Currencies are fragmented. The Australian dollar is also used in Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu; the US dollar in Hawaii, Guam, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands; the CFP franc in French Polynesia and New Caledonia. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea use the Type I plug; Hawaii and Guam use US-style sockets. Traffic drives on the left in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Samoa, and on the right in the US territories, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. English helps widely; French is spoken in French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Vanuatu, while Tok Pisin and Bislama serve as lingua francas in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

• Rapa Nui's national park protects 887 moai statues, a World Heritage site.
• Nan Madol on Pohnpei comprises more than 100 artificial islets.
• Murujuga in Western Australia holds more than a million petroglyphs.
• Papua New Guinea is home to more than 800 languages.
• Kiribati's Line Islands, at UTC+14, are among the first places to see each new day.