Australia & Oceania

Pitcairn Island is a place so remote, and with a history so bizarre, that until recently it was viewed almost as myth rather than reality. But the events that took place on this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean were very real.

Flores is a pretty island in eastern Indonesia which is home to nearly two million inhabitants. Most significantly, it is the only place on Earth where traces of an ancient hominin species known as Homo floresiensis have ever been found.

Australia Day is celebrated on 26th of January because it is the day that Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, made up of eleven convict ships, landed at Sydney Cove in Australia and raised the British Flag, marking the beginning of British sovereignty over Australia. Phillip took possession of the land in the name of King George III, declaring it terra nullius (uninhabited by humans).

In the remote South Australian desert, where temperatures are known to reach 125 °F in the shade, there is a town named Coober Pedy, where residents have dug themselves underground to escape the blistering heat.  Once the largest opal mining operation in the world, Coober Pedy is now a peculiar site where chimneys rise from the sand and signs warn people of unmarked holes in the ground.