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.
Both Aboriginal oral histories and the archaeological record shows the Chinese drove Australia's first global trade in the Asia-Pacific well before the first fleet's arrival. Oral histories tell of direct contact between Chinese and Yolngu people.
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.
Gold rush, the 1850s–1860s
The period of the 1850s to 1860s witnessed the largest pre-federation Chinese migration to Australia. Since gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, the news was quick to spread internationally and reached southern China.
In 1861, there were more than 24,000 Chinese immigrants on the Victorian goldfields of Ararat, Ballarat, Beechworth, Bendigo, Castlemaine and Maryborough.
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.
At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
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).
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.
The Californian Gold Rush had been known as 'old gold mountain' to the Chinese of Guangdong. The Australian rush was known as 'new gold mountain'. Chinese immigrants to Australia left such conditions as overpopulation and poverty.
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.
Resources and energy also play an important role in the China-Australia investment relationship. China is an important source of foreign investment in Australia. Foreign investment in Australia means greater infrastructure, more productivity and more jobs for Australians.
The first Afghans who migrated to Australia arrived mid the 19th century as cameleers. Over subsequent decades, they played a crucial role in facilitating British exploration of the country's desert centre.
Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia, and other myths from old school textbooks. Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region.
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.
Menzies says Zheng also took his fleet to America and around the globe. “There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Zheng He's fleet did indeed reach both the Atlantic and Pacific coast of North and South America,” he said.
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.
As immigration from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong continues, the Chinese American communities in both large cities and suburbs continue to adapt to the challenges that come with a growing and diverse culture. In the meantime, Chinese immigrants and their descendants have had an increasingly great impact on U.S. culture.
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.
Islam has grown to 813,392 people, which is 3.2 per cent of the Australian population.
Australia and New Zealand are part of the Oceania continent, and are on separate tectonic plates to Asia. That's why when people talk about the two countries, they may not think of them as being part of Asia. But they are an integral part of the Asia-Pacific region, also known as Apac.
Among other things, it has been used in reference to Australia's natural resources, weather, history, its early dependency of the British system, distance from problems elsewhere in the world, and other sorts of supposed prosperity.
Population. At the end of June 2021, 95,980 Pakistani-born people were living in Australia, almost three times the number (34,150) at 30 June 2011.
Country statistics
There are over 50 million overseas Chinese. Most of them are living in Southeast Asia where they make up a majority of the population of Singapore (75%) and significant minority populations in Malaysia (22.4%), Thailand (14%) and Brunei (10%).
As a result, Indians now account for 2.8% of the population, compared with China's 2.3%, while Britons lead with 3.8%. Yet reflecting the distortions of the pandemic, the proportion of Australia's population who are overseas-born actually edged down to 29.1% in 2021 from 29.8% a year earlier.