Why did Pacific Islanders stay on islands and didn't conquer countries of large land masses?

Why did Pacific Islanders stay on islands and didn't conquer countries of large land masses?

Such as Australia or parts of Asia (continent)?

they feared the aboriginal warrior

It wasn't technologically possible to sail to Australia until the 19th Century.

They live literally next to it

The Torres Strait Islanders live like 100kms from mainland Aus

I think you've got a backwards view of this, Pacific Islanders originated on mainlands (probably SE Asia) and managed to colonise small islands. Australia was difficult to navigate to just wasn't on the radar of the migrations. That said, they did settle on New Zealand which is a comparatively large landmass.

Did they live coastally or have inland settlements in NZ?

It was "technically" possible to sail to South America.

Define inland. The furthest inland you can get in NZ is 120km.

well the melanesians went all the way to madagascar which is an island much larger than britain.

rapa nuians reached the Incans who would have been too powerful for anyone til the spaniards to conquer and traded with them for yams

honestly they did very well considering they spread everywhere from new caledonia up to saipan across to hawaii, if you include water it would be one of the largest "empires"

They expanded pretty much everywhere there wasn't already other people capable of pushing them back. How could they have settled either continent, between the harshly different lifestyle required and very hostile natives?

>19th Century
Abbos traded with SEA people for centuries before the white man arrived, and even the white man managed to reach Australia in 1606, you dumbass.

>madagascar
>melanesian
get fucked, it's the austronesian.

Is this a variation of the Corsica meme or what?

Nigger these people got to south americas and Madagascar on a fucking canoe way before the invention of compass, they definitely can and did travel to australia

and honestly, so do i. if i didn't have guns, booze and infectious diseases on my side i'd stay far away from those desert surviving madmen

Polynesians reached Southmerica but Incans were the ones reaching Rapanui in 1400.

>Land on the Philippines/Malaysia/Indonesia with sticks and shark teeth as weapons.
>BTFO by locals with steel and muskets.

They were a peaceful people.

>polynesians were peaceful
HA!

Was it possible for them to fight inland tribes when whole culture was depended on sea?
They colonized New Zealand because most dangerous thing there was the Moa bird.

I feel confident that a band of Maori warriors would fucking massacre a bunch of emaciated abbos with pointed sticks.

They had enough natural resources to stay where they were.

They would have also massacred their polynesian ancestors. They weren't Maoris yet when they first settled on that Island.

>Why did Pacific Islanders stay on islands and didn't conquer countries of large land masses?
>
>Such as Australia or parts of Asia (continent)?