Mainland Australia

Mainland Australia

Geography
Area	7,591,608 km2 (2,931,136 sq mi)
Administration
Australia
Demographics
Population	25,895,442

Mainland Australia is the main landmass of the Australian continent, excluding the Aru Islands, New Guinea, Tasmania, and other Australian offshore islands. The landmass also constitutes the mainland of the territory governed by the Commonwealth of Australia, and the term, along with continental Australia, can be used in a geographic sense to exclude surrounding continental islands and external territories. Generally, the term is applied to the states of New South Wales,^[a] Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, and Western Australia, as well as the Australian Capital Territory, Jervis Bay Territory, and Northern Territory.

The term is typically used when referring to the relationship between Tasmania and the other Australian states,^[1][2] in that people not from Tasmania are referred to as mainlanders.^[3] Tasmania has been omitted on a number of occasions from maps of Australia, reinforcing the divide between Tasmania and the mainland. The 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane left Tasmania off the map of Australia during the opening ceremony, as did the designs of the Australian Swim Team uniform for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.^[3]

The land mass covers 7,591,608 km² (2,931,136 sq mi), about 98.7% of the area of the country of Australia and 1.5% of Earth's surface.^[4] It is sometimes described as an island, in which case it would be the largest island by area–more than three times the size of Greenland.^[5] Its population is about 25.9 million, 98% of Australia's total population. Mainland Australia has a variety of climatic regions, ranging from tropical rainforests and deserts to cool temperature rainforests to snow-covered mountains.^[6] It is in these mainland regions that much of Australia's native flora and fauna can be found.

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