South Pacific
Australasia is a region of Oceania: New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term 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 (to the east) and the southeast Pacific (Magellanica). It is also distinct from Micronesia (to the northeast). From an ecological perspective the Australasia ecozone is a distinct region with a common evolutionary history and a great many unique flora and fauna. In this context, Australasia is limited to Australia, New Guinea, and neighbouring islands, including the Indonesian islands from Lombok and Sulawesi eastward. The biological dividing line from Asia is the Wallace line – Borneo and Bali lie on the western, Asian side. New Zealand comprises another ecological zone altogether, as it had been isolated from the rest of the world, including the rest of Australasia, for even longer.