This is a list of regions of Australia that are not Australian states or territories. The most commonly known regionalisation is the governmental division of the state into regions for economic development purposes.
Others regionalisations include those made for purposes of land management, such as agriculture or conservation; information gathering, such as statistical or meteorological. Although most regionalisations were defined for specific purposes and give specific boundaries, many regions will have similar names and extents across different regionalisations. As a result, the names and boundaries of regions can vary and may overlap in popular places.
Not all the regions in this list have official status as an economic or administrative region.
A regionalisation of Australia is a system by which Australia is divided into regions. There are a great many different regionalisations, created for a range of purposes, including political, administrative, statistical and biological.
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Main article: States and territories of Australia |
The most prominent regionalisation of Australia is the division into the various states and territories. For electoral purposes, the Australian Senate uses states and territories, but the Australian House of Representatives breaks the country into Divisions. Each state is similarly divided into electoral "regions", "districts" or "provinces", each of which elects members to the house or houses of the state's parliament. Finally, the country is divided into local government areas, each of which is administered by a council.
Other administrative regionalisations may exist within each state. For example, the whole of mainland Western Australia other than the Perth metropolitan area, is divided into regions for the purposes of administration of the Regional Development Commissions Act 1993.
For the purposes of statistical geography, the Australian Bureau of Statistics uses the Australian Standard Geographical Classification, a hierarchical regionalisation whose coarsest level is the states and territories, then statistical divisions, statistical subdivisions, statistical local areas, and finally, census collection districts.
Until recently, most biogeographical and phytogeographical regionalisations of Australia were individually defined for each state and territories; for example: Gwen Harden's botanical regionalisation of New South Wales; Orchard's "natural regions" regionalisation of Tasmania; and John Stanley Beard's division of Western Australia into Botanical Provinces and Botanical Districts.
More recently, two regionalisations that cover the entire country have been put in place. The World Wildlife Fund's regionalisation of the world into 825 terrestrial ecoregions created 40 ecoregions in Australia. Within Australia, however, the de facto standard regionalisation is now the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA). This divides Australia into 85 bioregions, which are further divided into 404 subregions.
There are a range of other regionalisations of Australia, including:
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Main article: Regions of New South Wales |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's NSW regions map.[1]
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Main article: Regions of the Northern Territory |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's NT region map[2]
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Main article: Regions of Queensland |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's Queensland region map[3]
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Main article: Regions of South Australia |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's South Australia regions map[4]
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Main article: Regions of Tasmania |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's Tasmania regions map[5]
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Main article: Regions of Victoria |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's Victoria regions map[6]
The six official regions of Victoria are:[7]
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Main article: Regions of Western Australia |
See also the Bureau of Meteorology's Western Australia regions map.[8]
The Western Australian system of regions defined by the Government of Western Australia for purposes of economic development administration, which excludes the Perth metropolitan area, is a series of nine regions.
The nine defined regions are: