The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 7 letter word OCEANIA
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
O
C
E
A
N
I
A
More clues leading to the result OCEANIA
- Islands forming ring, a nice sort of area
- Canoe I manoeuvred over a Southern Hemisphere area
- Part of world Eco’s written about with enthusiasm at first ignored
- Once a strange island by American continent
- ‘Dancing On Ice: ‘Australia’ vacuously presenting ‘Polynesia, etc’
- Orc remains in an oddly large group of islands
- Wellington’s here–- in a canoe I converted
- To the west, a cool and a green Pacific region
- Each province cuts tuberous plant for main region
- A canoe travelling around one large group of islands
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "group of islands" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case group of islands = oceania.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.