Use initial capitals for all nouns and adjectives in formal place names (e.g. continents, countries, cities, oceans):
Australia Asia Sydney Atlantic Ocean South Pole Lake George
Also use initial capitals for adjectives and nouns derived from place names:
Australian Asian Canberran Victorian
Many geographical names comprise a specific word (or proper noun) (e.g. Murray, Bass) and a generic word (e.g. river, mountain). Use initial capitals for both components if they are part of the formal name:
Mount Kosciuszko the Blue Mountains the Great Dividing Range the Murray River
Blue Lake Lake Eyre the Tasman Sea Bass Strait Torres Strait
the Great Barrier Reef Lord Howe Island Freycinet Peninsula
If you are not sure whether a name is a formal name, look it up in the dictionary. If the name appears as a formal name in the Macquarie dictionary(Opens in a new tab/window) (for Australian names) or the Oxford dictionary(Opens in a new tab/window) (for other countries), use initial capitals; if it does not appear, use lower case:
Top End but western New South Wales north shore [of Sydney]
Omit the apostrophe in possessive forms:
Arthurs Lake Kings Cross
When 2 or more names of the same type occur together, use lower case for the generic part of the name:
the Murray River the Darling River the Murray and Darling rivers Mount Wellington Mount Field mounts Wellington and Field
Caution! The Gazetteer of Australia(Opens in a new tab/window) lists the official name as Murray River in New South Wales and Victoria, but River Murray in South Australia.
However, generic terms have initial capitals when they are plural but part of a single name:
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Shortened forms also have initial capitals if they include a specific element of the name:
the Hawaiian Islands Hawaii the island of Hawaii
the Windward Islands the Windwards
the Rocky Mountains the Rockies
the Great Dividing Range the Divide the Great Divide
the Great Barrier Reef the Reef
the Great Australian Bight the Bight
the Nullarbor Plain the Nullarbor
Do not use initial capitals for words that appear to be part of a name but are generic words used decriptively:
the Amazon basin
the California desert
the Goulburn River valley [river is part of the formal name but valley is not]
the Indian subcontinent [a descriptive rather than formal geographical name]