David,
It depends on how much of a splitter or lumper you are. The traditional
division of the world into eight biogeographic regions puts Australia in the
Australasian region, which includes Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, PNG
and various Indonesian islands. Where the boundary runs through Indonesia
depends on whether you are just talking about birds or taking other animals and
plants into account too (Wallace's line and Lydekker's line are amongst the
suggestions - I think ornithologists tend to draw the line between Sulawesi and
Halmahera).
There is a discussion in Ian Newton's The Speciation and Biogeography of Birds,
and any biogeography text would cover it.
Whether you include New Zealand with Australia depends on whether you think one
should split things into more than eight regions. The same issue arises as to
whether Madagascar should really be part of the afrotropical region. And then
Australia can be split up into different regions too.
If you want some ideas on ways to split up birding lists, you could have a look
at how the American Birding Association does it - see
http://www.aba.org/bigday/listingareas.pdf
Murray
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