The Coral Sea Islands Territory includes a group of small uninhabited tropical islands and reefs in the Coral Sea, northeast of Queensland, Australia and south of ► Papua New Guinea. The territory covers 780,000 sq km, extending east and south from the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and include Heralds Beacon Island, Osprey Reef, the Willis Group, and fifteen other reef/island groups.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day the Coral Sea Islands, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day the Coral Sea Islands.
The Coral Sea Islands were first charted in 1803; in the 1870 and 1880s the islands were mined for guano but the absence of a permanent supply of fresh water prevented long-term habitation. The Coral Sea Islands are part of the Australian province of Queensland. of Australia since its independence. During World War II in april 1942 it was the theatre of the Battle of the Coral Sea, in which Japan defeated the United States. These two maps are about this battle. The Coral Sea Islands become a separate Australian territory in 1969.
Notes and references
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.