Capitals of Oceania

Australia’s capital exists because Sydney and Melbourne could not agree, so a new city was built between them.

One big island and thousands of small ones

Oceania is the smallest continent by land, about 8.5 million square kilometres, and Australia alone makes up roughly nine tenths of it. The rest is New Zealand, New Guinea and thousands of islands spread across the Pacific Ocean. Geographers group the Pacific islands into three regions: Melanesia in the southwest, including Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; Micronesia in the north, with many small coral atolls; and Polynesia, a huge triangle that reaches from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island.

There are 14 independent countries, but only six are large enough to click on this globe. The other eight are small island states with big stretches of ocean. Kiribati is spread so widely that it has land north and south of the equator and on both sides of the 180th meridian, so it lies in all four hemispheres. Several territories also appear on the map, such as New Caledonia, which belongs to France.

Large and small countries

Australia, at about 7.7 million square kilometres, is the sixth largest country in the world. Papua New Guinea, on the eastern half of New Guinea, is second in Oceania, and New Zealand third. At the other extreme is Nauru, a single raised coral island of 21 square kilometres, the third smallest country in the world after Vatican City and Monaco. Nauru has no official capital; its government offices are in the Yaren District. Tuvalu, with 26 square kilometres, is not much larger.

The eight island countries missing from the globe, with their capitals, are Kiribati (Tarawa), the Marshall Islands (Majuro), the Federated States of Micronesia (Palikir), Nauru (no official capital), Palau (Ngerulmud), Samoa (Apia), Tonga (Nuku’alofa) and Tuvalu (Funafuti). Palau moved its capital from Koror, its largest town, to Ngerulmud in 2006.

How Canberra was chosen

When the six Australian colonies joined into one country in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be the capital. The constitution settled it with a compromise written into section 125: the capital had to be in New South Wales but at least 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Sydney, and Parliament would meet in Melbourne until it was ready. More than 60 sites were considered. Dalgety was chosen in 1904, then dropped, and in 1908 Parliament picked the Yass and Canberra district.

An international design competition drew 137 entries, and in May 1912 the winner was announced: the American architect Walter Burley Griffin, working with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin, who drew the plans. The city was named Canberra on 12 March 1913. Parliament first sat there on 9 May 1927 in a provisional building, and the permanent Parliament House opened in 1988. Sydney is still the largest city, which is why it is the most common wrong answer.

The four Melanesian capitals on the globe are easiest to learn with the island each one stands on. Port Moresby is on the south coast of New Guinea, in a country where more than 800 languages are spoken. Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, is on Guadalcanal. Suva, capital of Fiji, is on the island of Viti Levu, and Port Vila, capital of Vanuatu, is on Efate. Add Canberra and Wellington and you have every capital you can click in this part of the globe, six names in all, which makes Oceania the quickest region to finish.

Easy to mix up