Short answers, pulled from the story.
Oceania is a geographical region in the Pacific Ocean that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It is also described as a continent, with mainland Australia regarded as its continental landmass. It is the only major continental grouping named for the ocean that links its parts together rather than for a shared landmass.
Oceania has an estimated land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres and a population of around 46.3 million as of 2024, when including Australia but excluding the Malay Archipelago. Compared against other continental land areas, it is the smallest and the second-least populated after Antarctica.
The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Indigenous Australians reached Australia around 50,000 years ago, among the earliest human migrations out of Africa, while Austronesian speakers spread from Taiwan into the Pacific between roughly 3000 and 1000 BCE.
Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward, beginning with Portuguese navigators who reached the Maluku Islands, Timor, and other islands between 1512 and 1526. Ferdinand Magellan's Spanish expedition entered and named the Pacific on the 28th of November 1520, and the Magellan-Elcano voyage achieved the first circumnavigation of the world.
Definitions of Oceania vary because it is held together by the ocean rather than a single landmass, leaving its edges open to dispute. Geographers have argued over whether islands such as the Aleutians, Hawaii, Easter Island, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan belong. The United Nations has used a geopolitical definition since 1947 built on four subregions: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 metres. In New Zealand, the highest peak is Aoraki, also called Mount Cook, at 3,754 metres, while Hawaii's tallest mountain Mauna Kea rises 13,796 feet above mean sea level.