Solomon Islands Geography The Solomon Islands lie northeast of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean. They are part of a long chain of archipelagos called Melanesia, which stretches from Papua New Guinea in the north to New Caledonia and Fiji in the south. Second largest in the Melanesian chain, the Solomon Islands archipelago covers approximately 310,000 square miles (803,000 square kilometers) of ocean and consists of 10,639 square miles (27,556 square kilometers) of land. There are a total of 992 islands in the Solomon Islands History When Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira visited the Solomon Islands in 1568, he found some gold at the mouth, he erroneously thought that this could be one of the locations in which King Solomon (the Israelite monarch) obtained gold for his temple in Jerusalem. Mendaña then named the islands after King Solomon--Solomon Islands. Papuan-speaking hunter-gatherer...