Professor fails US student over Australia being a Country

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LoveNotHate
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10 Feb 2018, 10:31 am

Continental Australia includes: Australia, Papua New Guinea, Papua and West Papua, East Timor, and part of Indonesia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

Wikipedia says "continental Australia" is four countries.

How do locals distinguish? Just saying "Australia" could mean one country or really four countries.

I can see a problem, the student might have cited statistics from the four countries, and the assignment was to use statistics from only one country.


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naturalplastic
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10 Feb 2018, 10:58 am

EzraS wrote:
B19 wrote:
Only one? Australia has quite a few islands! (More than eight thousand)


I didn't know that, very interesting.


The USA has countless little islands too. BFD

"Australia proper" (whats usually thought of as "Australia"- both the continent and the nationstate) has only one big island. That's Tasmania. As a big as a typical state of the USA off the southeast coast of the main continent of Australia.

But if you wanna go crazy and go with LNH's definition of Australia then New Guinea and other islands of Indonesia (like Timor) can be lumped with the continent (but not with the political nation) of "Australia" apparently. That probably because all of those landmasses are on the same geological "plate" as Australia according to modern Plate Tectonic Theory. As Australia drifts north, New Guinea and the rest drift north with it.

Ironically in prewar school geography textbooks Australia was described as "the world largest island".

After WWII most school textbooks the world over decribed Australia as "the world's smallest continent".

The rise in status of the landmass from island to continent coincided with the rise in political status of the country from being a prewar colony of the British Empire to being the independent nation it is now.

Probably not a total coincidence.



B19
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10 Feb 2018, 3:56 pm

EzraS wrote:
B19 wrote:
Only one? Australia has quite a few islands! (More than eight thousand)


I didn't know that, very interesting.


You are far from alone in that EzraS. But at least you know that New Zealand is a different country, some distance away from our cousins on the other side of the Tasman Sea. A surprising number of Americans don't know this.

When staying in a rich gated community in East Texas as a guest, (and generous hosts who were very kind), I was asked to give a talk to a luncheon group of about 50 residents there. I spent 15 minutes talking about New Zealand, how it is a volcanic country with many distinct species, including the astonishing tuatara, the oldest living species in the world, in terms of survival from the far distant past, and how different New Zealand is from Australia, our links to the USA, and the many marriages that occurred in the wake of the second world war between NZ women and USA servicemen, hosted here during breaks from fighting with us in the Pacific as allies. (I managed to restrain myself from pointing out that we are better rugby players, CyberDad!! !)

At the end of this, I welcomed questions and they were:

"What is it like living in the outback?"
"Do you see kangaroos from your kitchen window?"
"How long was your flight from Australia to the USA?"

I did my best to be gracious and said that I had only visited the outback once, on the periphery, though I had flown over it and the colours are beautiful, that we had nothing like that in New Zealand, that the two countries are very very different in landscape and topography. (My introduction to diplomacy! Who says that aspies can't adapt to how others think and take their viewpoint into consideration!!)

The most beautiful Australian island I have been privileged to visit was Hamilton Island. I hope I will see more in future visits.



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10 Feb 2018, 4:56 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
DarthMetaKnight wrote:



PNG was a German colony and after Germans were kicked out the Indonesians illegally occupied west papua while east papua became a protectorate of Australia. However since 1975 PNG has been an independent country.


Not exactly. You have the Germans confused with the Dutch.


Sorry! you are right...Mein gott!
The upshot is that PNG's history involved occupation from everyone, the Dutch, Germans, Indonesians and Japanese before the eastern portion got independence in 1975. Australia's role as a protectorate hasn't quite finished as we oversee their elections and basically run their economy (Australian Mining company BHP are their main source of income) but we also play a similar role in Fiji, Solomon islands and other little nations



cyberdad
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10 Feb 2018, 4:57 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:

How do locals distinguish? Just saying "Australia" could mean one country or really four countries.

I can see a problem, the student might have cited statistics from the four countries, and the assignment was to use statistics from only one country.


Nope! just one country?



kraftiekortie
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10 Feb 2018, 5:05 pm

East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Australia are separate independent, sovereign nations.

East Timor is on the eastern part of an island. West Timor is a state of Indonesia which is on the western portion of the island. Papua New Guinea is the non-Malaysian portion of the island of New Guinea.

East Timor and Papua New Guinea are not on the Australian continent. They are considered part of the region known as Oceania (as far as I know). I would guess they would be considered part of the Australian "region."



Last edited by kraftiekortie on 10 Feb 2018, 5:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.

cyberdad
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10 Feb 2018, 5:06 pm

B19 wrote:
(I managed to restrain myself from pointing out that we are better rugby players, CyberDad!! !)

At the end of this, I welcomed questions and they were:

G'day from across the ditch :)
I myself prefer the "All blacks" to the Australian rugby team so agreed :D

B19 wrote:
"What is it like living in the outback?"
"Do you see kangaroos from your kitchen window?"
"How long was your flight from Australia to the USA?"

I enjoy listening to my fellow Australians trying to explain our "wide brown land" to foreigners when I am overseas. I myself have lived in the outback and it's a pretty landscape but a little monotonous (like driving through Nevada or Arizona) full of flies that get into your lungs and hot as heck! (the tourist brochures neglect those bits). I do have kangaroos on my street in a nearby park but need to take a 2min stroll from my house to see them...


B19 wrote:
The most beautiful Australian island I have been privileged to visit was Hamilton Island. I hope I will see more in future visits.

A little overated unless you like lying around beaches...I think the Indonesian island of Bali is prettier which is why more Aussies visit Bali than other tourist destination within Australia



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10 Feb 2018, 5:11 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
East Timor and Papua New Guinea are not on the Australian continent---but are considered part of the region known as Oceania (as far as I know).

Yeah although Oceania is a little outdated and arbitary like saying Asia is everything east of Constantinople

A more accurate definition is based on the Australian continental plate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Plate
The geological pate includes Australia, PNG and New Zealand and once even included southern India



LoveNotHate
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10 Feb 2018, 5:37 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Australia are separate independent, sovereign nations.

East Timor is on the eastern part of an island. West Timor is a state of Indonesia which is on the western portion of the island. Papua New Guinea is the non-Malaysian portion of the island of New Guinea.

East Timor and Papua New Guinea are not on the Australian continent. They are considered part of the region known as Oceania (as far as I know). I would guess they would be considered part of the Australian "region."

Are you responding to the wiki page of geographic scholars that say that the Australian continent has 4 countries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

Oceania has 19 countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania

This is from National Geographic ...
Image


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kraftiekortie
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10 Feb 2018, 6:00 pm

From a purely geological standpoint, since the above countries lie within the Australian Plate, they should be said to be within the Australian continent.



Last edited by kraftiekortie on 10 Feb 2018, 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

naturalplastic
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10 Feb 2018, 6:13 pm

According to modern geologic theory the planet is covered with rock "plates" that move around, and some carry landmasses, and the plates rub against each other, and bash into each other, etc.

And there is an "Australian" plate (like there is a North American plate).

That plate extends far out from the continent of Australia to include other landmasses (new guinea, timor, some (but not all) of New Zealand.

So if you use the tectonic plate as the defining thing then, yes, you could say that "Australia has two whole countries, and parts of two more" because that's what lies upon the Australian tectonic plate.

But not only is that a very strange an unorthodox usage of the term "Australia" it has problems.

One of the problems: by that logic you would have to say that Los Angelos, San Diego, and San Francisco, not to mention Tijuana, and all of Baja are all NOT part of North America!

One of the boundries of the North America Plate is the San Andreas Fault that runs through the state of California. All of California west of the San Andreas fault is on the Pacific Plate, and not on the North American Plate. And the includes big Cali cities like Frisco and L.A..



kraftiekortie
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10 Feb 2018, 6:25 pm

Now...I would never refer to Papua New Guinea and East Timor as "Australia." Ever.

Because they are not Australia. They are their own nations.

I probably wouldn't even refer to both of them as being part of the "Australian Continent."

Though a case could be made for it based on purely geological considerations.

It's true, of course, about the San Andreas Fault.



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10 Feb 2018, 6:48 pm

Dare I say that some citizens of the USA use the term "America" and Americans as if there were no other peoples or countries in the American landmasses. This has always puzzled me.



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10 Feb 2018, 7:21 pm

Y'all do still stand on your heads down there, though, right? I mean, you'd have to since everything is upside down. That part of what I learned in my American colledge is still true, isn't it?




:mrgreen:


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B19
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10 Feb 2018, 7:30 pm

Replace stand with scratch, Darmok. We are constantly astonished by the trends in the USA currently.



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10 Feb 2018, 7:54 pm

Darmok wrote:
Y'all do still stand on your heads down there, though, right? I mean, you'd have to since everything is upside down.

And what's wrong with seeing the world through an perspective...huh...huh..