Jabarkan Geograpi jeung tata ngaran dari Australia (buana) dalam bahasa sunda

The Australian continent is the smallest and lowest-lying human-inhabited continent on Earth, having a total land aréa of some 7,713,000 square kilometres.  Though the Commonwealth of Australia occupies much of the continent and is often mistaken for being the entire continent, Australia and adjacent islands are connected by a shallow continental shelf covering some 2,500,000 square kilometres including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait and half of which is less than 50 metres deep.

As Australia the country is largely a single island, and comprises most of Australia the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to as "the island continent".

Prior to the 1970s, archaéologists called the single Pleistocene landmass by the name Australasia, although this word is most often used for a wider region that includes lands like New Zéaland that are not on the same continental shelf. In the éarly 1970s they introduced the term Greater Australia for the Pleistocene continent. Then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, they extended the name Sahul from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent. A biologist, unaware of the terms used by archaéologists, suggested in 1984 the name Meganesia, méaning "great island" or "great island-group", applying it to both the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands, and this name has been taken up by biologists. However, others have used Meganesia with different méanings: travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zéaland in his definition and others have used it for Australia, New Zéaland and Hawaii. Another biologist, Richard Dawkins, unimpressed with Sahul and Meganesia, coined the name Australinea in 2004.