Economy and Trade

During my journey throughout Australia and Oceania I was also able to view firsthand the diverse economies of the region through a local and global context. Every place that I visited on my trip had a unique economic environment and system of trade. Australia has one of the most successful economies in the world in terms of GDP growth and purchasing power parity, but there are still areas in Oceania are not as powerful economically and live on subsistence agriculture. My trip to Oceania was an amazing opportunity to experience the region from an economic perspective.

When I visited Queensland, Australia I was able to gain a good understanding of a thriving industry in the region, and observe global influences on the Australian economy. Queensland is the north-eastern region of Australia, and it is often called “the Sunshine State” because of its warm weather. “The Sunshine State” is the center of one of Australia’s most important economic sectors – tourism. Attractions such as the Gold Coast, the Great Barrier Reef, and Hervey Bay are all major contributors to the state’s tourism industry, which adds over 4 billion to the state’s GDP each year.

I stayed at a Japanese-owned beach front resort in Gold Coast, and one of my favorite parts of my stay was taking surfing lessons. Gold Coast has some of the highest rated surfing areas in the world. The Japanese resort that I stayed in is indicative of a general trend in Australian economics from a global perspective. Increasingly, Australia and Oceania have moved away from countries in the western world like the United States and Great Britain and have began to concentrate on marketing to countries like Japan, China, and Indonesia, oftentimes seeking investment from businesses in those nations. Much of Gold Coast’s resorts are foreign owned, especially by Japanese investors. This new foreign investment has been a major contributor to Australia’s economic progress in the last twenty years.



Gold Coast, Australia



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I also had the opportunity to visit other places in Oceania, not just Australia. I had the unique experience of visiting Papua New Guinea, in the islands of Melanesia. The economic situation in many other nations in Oceania is not as strong as it is in fully modernized and globalized Australia, and Melanesia is the least-developed and poorest area of Oceania. The economy of Papua New Guinea is much different than that of Australia. Australia has a very strong, globalized economy with large and diverse international trade and tourism sectors.

In Papua New Guinea, I got to visit a fresh market, which was an amazing experience. Papua New Guinea and the rest of the islands of Melanesia have not been effected by tourism as much as Australia. The people of Papua New Guinea have mostly live in remote areas that are largely disconnected from global markets. This facilitates the creation of local markets in which small scale farmers bring their products to be sold at the local level.

I visited a market in Papua New Guinea was exciting and lively, and the food that was being sold was extremely fresh. Many different types of fresh fruit and vegetables were being sold, and bought a great pineapple. My trip to the market in Papua New Guinea was one of the best parts of my trip, and I got a firsthand look at the economic and trade factors that are in place in the less globalized areas of Oceania. Small market-based economies and less globalized markets are still in place in the islands of Melanesia. That was a very interesting contrast to observe, and it showed that Oceania is a very diverse area, and the whole region is not just like Australia.



A fresh market in Papua New Guinea.


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