The Australia Project has formats that are "Acceptable" (as listed) and "Not Acceptable" (abbreviations and a lack of commas), and then a bunch of usages that are not classified as one or the other.
Please note there are no "Preferred" formats defined by the Australia Project. Last time this was discussed people essentially agreed to disagree on the "best" place formats.
The British called all of the eastern seaboard "New South Wales" at one point.
"Port Phillip District" was a subdivision of New South Wales that later became Victoria.
"Swan River Colony" is legitimate, but would apply to no more than about 250 profiles, being only in use from 1829 to 6 February 1832. A while back there used be about 50 profiles with this usage, but almost all were used outside the relevant time period, so were corrected.
Re "Australian Colonies", I look at the counts here pretty often and the numbers for this usage only ever go down, never up. I think it probably used to appear in a drop down list, if not on familysearch, then somewhere else.
