Tea in Oceania
Oceania is the smallest tea-growing continent by volume, but it has a distinctive tea-drinking culture shaped by British colonial history, and a small, quality-focused domestic growing scene that's expanded in recent decades.
Australia
Tea drinking in Australia dates back to British colonisation in the late 18th century, and strong black tea remains part of everyday life for many Australians, alongside the country's globally influential specialty coffee culture. Commercial tea growing is limited but real: North Queensland, around the Atherton Tableland and Daintree region, has a subtropical, high-rainfall climate suited to Camellia sinensis, and small estates there have grown tea commercially since the 1960s–1970s. Australia also has an active herbal and native-botanical infusion market, incorporating native plants like lemon myrtle.
New Zealand
New Zealand grows very little tea commercially, but it has a strong tea-drinking culture inherited from British settlement, and a well-developed specialty and herbal tea retail market. A small number of boutique growers have experimented with local tea cultivation, particularly in warmer North Island regions.
Pacific Island traditions
Across the wider Pacific, the most culturally significant infused drink isn't tea but kava, made from the root of Piper methysticum and traditionally prepared and shared in Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and other Pacific nations as part of important social and ceremonial occasions: playing a role in Pacific communal life not unlike the one mate plays in parts of South America.