Did the ancient Chinese know about Australia?

In a book titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies claims that in the 1420's several fleets of Chinese ships sailed around the world, making contact with many countries before Europeans explored them, including Australia.

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When did the Chinese first find Australia?

Records show that about 18 Chinese settlers had immigrated to Australia before 1848. The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney is reported to have been Mak Sai Ying. Born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798, he arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.

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How did Chinese people get to Australia?

By the early 1850s, news of a gold rush in Australia had reached southern China, sparking an influx in Chinese migration to Australia. It is thought that approximately 7000 Chinese people came to work at the Araluen gold fields in southern NSW.

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Who lived in Australia first?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.

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How were the Chinese treated in Australia?

The Chinese were not always welcome in Australia and were constantly reminded of their allegedly inferior status. The most commonly cited acts of discrimination and prejudice against the Chinese in Australia were the Lambing Flat riots of 1860 and 1861.

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Australia: Did The Chinese Land There Centuries Before The British?

43 related questions found

Why is Australia so important to China?

Trade and investment

China is Australia's largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for nearly one third (32.2 per cent) of our trade with the world.

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What did the Chinese call Australia in the 1850s?

The Chinese immigrants referred to the Australian gold fields as 'Xin Jin Shan', or New Gold Mountain. The Californian gold rush was in decline by the 1850s and had become known as 'Jiu Jin Shan', Old Gold Mountain.

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Who was in Australia before Aborigines?

The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.

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What did aboriginals call Australia?

There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.

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What is the oldest culture in the world?

The Kuku Yalanji people, Australia

Deep in the rainforests of Daintree, North Queensland, you can find one of the oldest civilisations in the world. The Kuku Yalanji people have made the area their home and lived in relative isolation for over 50,000 years!

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What is the Chinese name for Australia?

The Chinese name for Australia has four characters (澳大利亚) and is written in Pinyin and pronounced using Mandarin (or “Putonghua”) as Aodaliya (Ao-da-li-ya).

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Did the Chinese ever explore Australia?

You see in the 1420s Australia's west and east coasts were visited and charted by the Chinese. In fact in a great surge of navigation and discovery the Chinese mapped much of the world in the 1420s.

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What percentage of Australia is Chinese?

There are now some 1.4 million people with Chinese ancestry living in Australia, comprising 5.5% of the population. 1 According to the 2021 census, of Australia's top five ancestries, the only group to have grown since the last census in 2016 was Australians with Chinese ancestry.

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Did Chinese trade with Aboriginals?

Makasar traded with Aboriginal people for trepang (sea cucumber), which they boiled down, dried on their boats and traded with China where it is still used for food and medicine. The Makasar did not settle in Arnhem Land but they did have an influence on the Yolŋu people's society and ritual.

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Who discovered Australia before Cook?

While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.

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Who was the earliest Chinese in Australia?

Two hundred years ago, almost to the day, on 27 February 1818, Mak Sai Ying arrived in Port Jackson, on the ship Laurel. Mak was the first known Chinese immigrant to arrive in the colony of New South Wales.

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Where did aborigines come from?

It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.

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Who was the first Aboriginal?

Aboriginal peoples

Genetic studies appear to support an arrival date of 50–70,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.

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What was Australia's original name?

After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.

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What is the oldest civilization in Australia?

A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.

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What race are Australian Aboriginals?

Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.

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How many full blooded aboriginals are there in Australia?

Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.

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Why did the Chinese come to Australia before the gold rush?

It was the increasing demand for cheap labour after convict transportation ceased in the 1840s that led to much larger numbers of Chinese men arriving as indentured labourers, to work as shepherds for private landowners and the Australian Agricultural Company.

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What food did the Chinese introduce to Australia?

Locally sourced meat, seafood and vegetables were complemented by imported ingredients such as Cantonese sausage, tofu, lychee nuts, black fungus and bamboo shoots. By the late 1800s, about a third of commercial cooks in Australia were Chinese.

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How did the Chinese find out about the gold rush in Australia?

A Chinese man sent a letter to his hometown in Guangdong and 3,000 Chinese came to Melbourne for “Xin Jin Shan -New Gold Mountain” (Chinese call California “Jiu Jin Shan-Old Gold Mountain”). During 1851-1856, there were about 50,000 Chinese that came to Australia for gold.

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