>>213720333 (OP)Incorrect, it has six states. Tasmania is also a state.
In terms of both political and physical geography, I think of Australia as really being 18 "things", overall. Of course, the six states, particularly to the east, house the majority of the population, industry and so on. But there are also several overseas territories of which Australia is sovereign.
On the mainland, the most obvious are the Northwest Territory (not afforded statehood on account of its very low population), the ACT, but also Jervis Bay which acts as a port for the landlocked ACT and which is effectively governed by the latter, but which is legally and physically a distinct territory from the ACT itself. This brings us up to 9 objects, or things.
Across the oceans, we have Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Each having tiny populations of several hundred people, but they are permanent residents, humans actually live their normal lives there, more or less. The others are purely military/science outposts. The Coral Sea Islands to the NE are staffed by a tiny crew of weather watchers, Ashmore and Cartier Islands are a sort of uninhabitable reef area used by nearby Indonesians as fishing grounds, the AAT is the Australian claim on Antarctica, and the Heard and MacDonald islands are one of the harshest and most remote places on earth.
However, I also include Lord Howe Island (a drop dead gorgeous place) and MacQuarie island as extra things, physically distant but legally administered as parts of NSW and Tasmania, respectively. MacQuarie is an Important Bird Area (read: a wasteland kept wild).