Indonesians refer to their homeland as Tanah Air Kita, which means “Our Land and Water.” This refers to its geographical makeup consisting of 18,108 islands with a total land mass of 1.91 million square kilometers connected by six seas covering more than 3 million square kilometers.
About 6,000 islands are inhabited with Java accounting for more than half the nation's population. Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world extending some 2,000 kilometers from North to South and more than 5,000 kilometers from East to West. The archipelago stretches over more than one-tenth of the Equator between Southeast Asia and Australia. The largest islands are the Kalimantan provinces on Borneo, Sumatra, Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), Sulawesi and Java (where Cirebon is located in the western part of the island).
Nearly 60 percent of Indonesia's land is forested and a significant portion is mountainous and volcanic. Mt. Merapi, near Yogyakarta, is regarded as the most volatile of Indonesia's 500 volcanoes, 129 of which are still active. Java alone has 112 volcanoes. Indonesia is inhabited by 242 million people (2005) and is the fourth biggest population in the world. 59% of the population lives in Java.
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