Austrum was never regioned appropriately. Lemonss, a currently banned player, was admin for a few weeks during the conflict that happened last summer. He made Austrum during his time as admin and only regioned it and set himself as the region owner, instead of registering it as an area shop region and buying it. In this way he made sure that it could not be auto sold if he went inactive nor bought by any other players. This is why Austrum is so large, Lemonss made it for himself because he wanted a large island even though what he did was abuse.
(For players who are unfamiliar with regioning and area shop... Each property that you can buy or rent is regioned then added to the area shop "marketplace" as a buy or rent listing. Regularly made regions have 'owner' and 'member' positions. Area shop works by adding the renter or the buyer to the 'member' section so they have full access to the region. So if you have perms to region, like Lemonss did, you can abuse by adding yourself to 'member' or 'owner' positions of a region to be able to modify it instead of having to buy it.)