Where Is Australia Located?
Australia is an island nation that is located in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean. Using Asia’s eastern coast as an orientation, Australia is located to the southeast of the mainland Asian continent and to the southwest of North America.
Located in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere, the midpoint of the Australian continent lays at roughly the same latitude as Africa’s southernmost point and the same longitude as Japan. Although it is considered to be part of the southern Pacific Ocean, Australia is still far north relative to Antarctica and other far-south regions, such as the extreme southern tip of South America.
Australia is a neighbor of several other islands in the south Pacific including: Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines to the north, New Zealand to the southeast, the Marshall Islands to the northeast and Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti and French Polynesia to the east. There are some small islands to the west of Australia, but Africa is the most significant landmass in that direction. While Australia’s eastern coast borders the Pacific Ocean, its western coast borders the Indian Ocean. Its latitude and longitude coordinates vary, but its approximate midpoint could be said to sit at 135 degrees east and 20 degrees south.
