Australasia, a region of Oceania, comprises Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. Charles de Brosses coined the term (as French Australasie) in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes.
He derived it from the Latin for “south of Asia” and differentiated the area from Polynesia (to the east) and the southeast Pacific (Magellanica).
The bulk of Australasia sits on the Indo-Australian Plate, together with India.