If Australia a Small Continent or a large Island?

[ignoramus]

When she answers the door, please don't look at her feet! She's get a bit funny!

[The Valkyrie]

When she answers the door, please don't look at her feet! She's get a bit funny!

Strangely I can see the quarry where Helm's Deep was filmed from my deck.

[ignoramus]

Stop making me jealous, will ya!

[The Valkyrie]

Stop making me jealous, will ya!

Ha!

[Anomalocaris]

I would think the fact that Australia sits on its own tectonic plate classifies it as a continent. Yet, by that definition, India should also be considered a continent, while Europe, with shares the Eurasian tectonic plate with Asia, should not.

It appear then that continental status is based more on politics and culture than empirical science.

That’s not right.  Australia does not sit on its own tectonic plate.  It shares a much larger plate with New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Indonesian island of Sulewesi, phillipines, all the sea floor of eastern Indian Ocean, and India.   Australia is just a small part of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate.

But that’s not important to whether Australia is a continent or not.  

Geologically, a continent is a contiguous block of crust that is primarily granitic in composition,and sits on a deep root of metamorphic gneiss.   A geological continent can have a tectonic plate to itself, can share a tectonic plate with other continents, and can be spread over sseveral tectonic plates.   Geologically Tasmania and Australia are a single continent because their granitic and gneiss basement rocks are connected under the sea.   They share a tectonic plate with India.  New Zealand is geologically not part of the Australian continent although it sits on the same tectonic plate.   India sits on same tectonic plate as Australia but is part of the single giant euroasia geological continent, which is actually spread over several tectonic plates.  Parts of the euroasia continent sits on:

the North American tectonic plate,
the indo-Australian tectonic plate,
the Arabian tectonic plate,
and of course the euroasia tectonic plate.

North American geological continent is split between the North American tectonic plate and pacific tectonic plate.   The seam between the two tectonic plates is the San Andreas Fault in California .

Geographically, continent is arbitrarily defined and accepted by convention. By convention Australia and New Zealand are considered a single geographic continent. By convention Europe is regarded as a separate geographic continent even though Europe and Asia are a single geological continent and Europe sits on the same tectonic plate as most of Asia.

[Little lunch]

Valkyrie, damn it, I was just there this past Feb, how close to Brisbane do you live?

I live an hour and a half away in Toowoomba and I was going to catch up with you but my computer was out of action for about two months.

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It was funny, but literally my second to last they in Brisbane, was taking a water taxi from Victoria Point to Russel Island and a lady told me about the poisonous spiders on Russel Island. I was a bit annoyed, in a silly way, at my host at the house I stayed at on the Island for failing to tell me about that. 

America has some of our own dangerous animals sure, but nothing compared to Australia. The salt water crocks would scare the shit out of me the most. I don't see how anyone lives on the coast in the North where they live. 

I cant remember the name of their beach snake, but they have one that does not run away, very poisonous and deadly, and that fucker will chase your ass down.

We're not really that scared of spiders and I honestly have rarely heard of someone being bitten that I know.
Crocs are a different story. Fucken scary.
I don't know of a beach snake that'll chase you down but a Taipan will, which is more of a river snake.
I'm more scared though of sharks and feral bush pigs here.