* Where is PAPUA NEW GUINEA Located? [Papua New Guinea Map]

Where is PAPUA NEW GUINEA located on the map?

Papua New Guinea, in long form the independent state of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea (462,840 km2) (the other half Western New Guinea being under Indonesian sovereignty). It is located in the Near Oceania, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, north of Australia, and west of the Solomon Islands.

The name of the country comes from “papou”, a word which, according to the naturalist Alfred Wallace, comes from the Malay puwah-puwah or papuwah which means “kinky”. The French ethnologist Christian Pelras, a specialist in the south of the island of Celebes, writes that maps established in the eighteenth century by the Bugis mention the name “Papua” to designate New Guinea.

New Guinea is the name given in the sixteenth century by a Spanish explorer, because of the resemblance he finds to the inhabitants with the population of Equatorial Guinea in Africa. The country gained independence in 1975, and is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea as well as the islands of New Ireland, New Britain and Bougainville Island.

Papua New Guinea has a mountainous terrain, much of which is covered with rainforest. Altitudes are high (Mount Wilhelm rises to 4,509 meters) and snowfall can occur, rare in the tropics. The island has several rivers, including the Sepik (1,126 km) that flows through the swampy plains of the north and the Fly (1,050 km) that flows from the center to the south coast through one of the largest marshes in the world.

Where is Papua New Guinea located? Papua New Guinea shares a border with the Indonesian-dominated western New Guinea region that occupies the western half of the island, as well as maritime borders with Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the southeast.

The climate is tropical. The monsoon is blowing from the northwest from December to March, and from south to east from May to October. Seasonal variation in temperatures is low.