Mainland Australia
Mainland Australia is the main landmass of the Australian continent excluding Tasmania and other offshore islands. The land mass also constitutes the mainland of the territory governed by the Commonwealth of Australia, and the term, along with continental Australia, can be used in a geographic sense to exclude surrounding continental islands and external territories. Generally, the term is applied to the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia, as well as the Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory, and Jervis Bay Territory.
The term is typically used when referring to the relationship between Tasmania and the other Australian states, in that people not from Tasmania are referred to as mainlanders. Tasmania has been omitted on a number of occasions from maps of Australia, reinforcing the divide between Tasmania and the mainland. The 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane left Tasmania off the map of Australia during the opening ceremony, as did the designs of the Australian Swim Team uniform for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
The land mass covers, about 98.7% of the area of the country of Australia and covering 1.5% of the Earth's surface. Its population is about 24.5 million, 98% of Australia's population.
