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63-778: Alison Croggon (born 1962) is a contemporary Australian poet , playwright , fantasy novelist , and librettist . Born in the Transvaal , South Africa, Alison Croggon's family moved to England before settling in Australia , first in Ballarat then Melbourne . She has worked as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald . Her first volume of poetry, This is the Stone , won the Anne Elder Award and

126-595: A distinct people of Melanesian ancestry, indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea , and some nearby settlements on the mainland. The term "Aboriginal" is traditionally applied to only the indigenous inhabitants of mainland Australia and Tasmania , along with some of the adjacent islands. Indigenous Australians is an inclusive term used when referring to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders (the "first peoples"). Dispersing across

189-407: A distinctive Australian identity and national character began in the 19th century. The primary language is Australian English . Australia is home to a diversity of cultures , a result of its history of immigration . Since 1788, Australian culture has primarily been a Western culture strongly influenced by early Anglo-Celtic settlers. The cultural divergence and evolution that has occurred over

252-599: A distinctly Australian context. Other influences include Australian Aboriginal culture , the traditions brought to the country by waves of immigration from around the world, and the culture of the United States . The Colony of New South Wales was established by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1788, with the arrival of the First Fleet , and five other colonies were established in the 19th century, now forming

315-621: A part of government policy until the Whitlam government (1972–1975), when immigration numbers were substantially cut back, only to be restored by the Fraser government (1975–1982). Some 4.2 million immigrants arrived between 1945 and 1985, about 40 percent of whom came from Britain and Ireland. 182,159 people were sponsored by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) from the end of World War II up to

378-482: A proportion of the total population was as follows: 57.2% European (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European ), 33.8% (including 29.9% Australian) Oceanian , 17.4% Asian (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian , 6.4% North-East Asian , and 4.5% South-East Asian ), 3.2% North African and Middle Eastern , 1.4% Peoples of the Americas , and 1.3% Sub-Saharan African . At

441-497: A result of many shared linguistic, historical, cultural and geographic characteristics, Australians have often identified closely with New Zealanders in particular. Australian citizenship prior to 1949 was a social, moral, and political concept. Prior to the introduction of Australian citizenship , Australians had the status of " British subjects ". The High Court of Australia in Potter v Minahan (1908) stated that "Although there

504-475: A sustainable population of around 750,000. Post-war immigration to Australia The first Minister for Immigration , Arthur Calwell , promoted mass immigration with the slogan "populate or perish". It was Billy Hughes, as Minister for Health and Repatriation, who had coined the "populate or perish" slogan in the 1930s. Calwell coined the term " New Australians " in an effort to supplant such terms as Balt, pommy and wog . The 1% target remained

567-455: Is no Australian nationality as distinguished from British nationality, there is an Australian species of British nationality." The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect data on race , but asks each Australian resident to nominate up to two ancestries each census . These ancestry responses are classified into broad standardised ancestry groups. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses within each standardised group as

630-522: Is thought to be higher than the numbers captured in the census as those nominating their ancestry as "Australian" are classified within the Oceanian group, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics has stated that most who nominate "Australian" as their ancestry are Anglo-Celtic Australians . Since soon after the beginning of British settlement in 1788, people of European descent have formed

693-585: The de facto national language. Australian English is a major variety of the language with a distinctive accent and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling. General Australian serves as the standard dialect. At the 2021 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for 72% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin (2.7%), Arabic (1.4%), Vietnamese (1.3%), Cantonese (1.2%) and Punjabi (0.9%). Over 250 Indigenous Australian languages are thought to have existed at

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756-660: The Australian colonies . From the mid-19th century, Chinese dubbed Australia the New Gold Mountain after the Gold Mountain of California in North America. They typically sent money to their families in the villages, regularly visited their families, and retired to their home villages after many years working as market gardeners , shopkeepers or cabinet-makers . As with many overseas Chinese groups

819-606: The English language , the existence of a parliamentary system of government drawing upon the Westminster system , constitutional monarchy , American constitutionalist and federalist traditions, Christianity as the dominant religion, and the popularity of sports including cricket , rugby football and tennis are evidence of a significant Anglo-Celtic heritage derived from the descendants of early settlers who form an ancestral group known as Anglo-Celtic Australians . As

882-509: The Mary Gilmore Prize . Her novella Navigatio was highly commended in the 1995 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award . Four novels of the fantasy genre series Pellinor have been published. She also founded and edits the online writing magazine Masthead and writes theatre criticism . Croggon has also written libretti for Michael Smetanin's operas Gauguin: A Synthetic Life and The Burrow , which premiered respectively at

945-665: The Melbourne Festival , The Red Shed Company ( Adelaide ) and ABC Radio . As of 2023, she is arts editor at The Saturday Paper . She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband Daniel Keene and three children. Australians Australians , colloquially known as Aussies , are the citizens , nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia . This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, these connections exist and are collectively

1008-678: The Philippines , while many are descendants of such immigrants. The very early history of Chinese Australians involved significant immigration from villages of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China. More recent Chinese migrants include those from Mandarin and other Chinese dialects or forms. Less well-known are the kinds of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in migrating. Gold rushes lured many Chinese to

1071-515: The Red Army and thus mostly anti-Communist and so politically acceptable. The 1% target survived a change of government in 1949, when the Menzies government succeeded Chifley's. The new Minister of Immigration was Harold Holt (1949–56). The British component remained the largest component of the migrant intake until 1953. Between 1953 and late 1956, migrants from Southern Europe outnumbered

1134-675: The Roman Catholic Church (20% of the population) and the Anglican Church of Australia (9.8%). Multicultural immigration since the Second World War has led to the growth of non-Christian religions, the largest of which are Islam (3.2%), Hinduism (2.7%), Buddhism (2.4%), Sikhism (0.8%), and Judaism (0.4%). In 2021, just under 8,000 people declared an affiliation with traditional Aboriginal religions. According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and

1197-532: The Snowy Mountains Scheme . This hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south-east Australia consisted of sixteen major dams and seven power stations constructed between 1949 and 1974. It remains the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia. Necessitating the employment of 100,000 people from over 30 countries, to many it denotes the birth of multicultural Australia. In 1955

1260-577: The animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation . The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land. The current Australian resident population is estimated at 27,837,000 (28 November 2024). This does not include Australians living overseas . In 2015, 2.15% of

1323-465: The world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019. Between European colonisation in 1788 and the Second World War , the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England , Ireland , Wales and Scotland ), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during

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1386-525: The 19th century. Many early settlements were initially penal colonies to house transported convicts . Immigration increased steadily, with an explosion of population in the 1850s following a series of gold rushes . In the decades immediately following the Second World War, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe , with many more immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe than in previous decades. Since

1449-476: The 2000 Melbourne Festival and Perth Festival , produced by ChamberMade . In 2014, Iain Grandage (composer) and Croggon (librettist) collaborated to present The Riders , based on Tim Winton 's novel The Riders . Its world premiere was in Melbourne. Other poems by Croggon have been set to music by Smetanin, Christine McCombe, Margaret Legge-Wilkinson, and Andrée Greenwell. Her plays have been produced by

1512-481: The 2016 census. Australia has no official religion; its Constitution prohibits the Commonwealth government, but not the states, from establishing one, or interfering with the freedom of religion . At the 2021 Census, 38.9% of the population identified as having "no religion" , up from 15.5% in 2001. The largest religion is Christianity (43.9% of the population). The largest Christian denominations are

1575-528: The 2021 Census. Germans formed the largest non-English-speaking group in Australia up to the 20th century. Although a few individuals had emigrated earlier, the first large group of Germans arrived in South Australia 1838, not long after the British colonisation of South Australia . Asian Australians are Australians with ancestry wholly or partially from the continent of Asia. At the 2021 census,

1638-541: The 2021 census finding 4.4% of the population claiming ancestry from Italy be they migrants to Australia or their descendants born in Australia of Italian heritage. Australia's long-history of Italian immigration has given rise to an Italo-Australian dialect of the Italian language. German Australians are Australians of German ancestry . The German community constitutes the second largest non-Anglo Celtic European ethnic group in Australia, amounting to 4% of respondents in

1701-575: The 2021 census, 3.2% of the Australian population identified as being Indigenous — Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders . Indigenous Australians experience higher than average rates of imprisonment and unemployment, lower levels of education, and life expectancies for males and females that are, respectively, 11 and 17 years lower than those of non-indigenous Australians. Some remote Indigenous communities have been described as having " failed state "-like conditions. In 2019, 30% of

1764-598: The 2021 census, the most commonly nominated individual ancestries as a proportion of the total population were: European Australians are Australians of whose descent is wholly or partially European. Australians of European descent are the majority in Australia, with the number of ancestry responses categorised within the European groups as a proportion of the total population amounting to 57.2% (including 46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European ). The proportion of Australians with European ancestry

1827-468: The 20th century's hostile policies to the new generation of skilled professional migrants of the 21st century... India became the largest source of skilled migrants in the 21st century." Indigenous Australians are descendants of the original inhabitants of the Australian continent . Their ancestors are believed to have migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago. The Torres Strait Islanders are

1890-410: The Australian continent over time, the population expanded and differentiated into hundreds of distinct groups, each with its own language and culture. More than 400 distinct Australian Aboriginal peoples have been identified across the continent, distinguished by unique names designating their ancestral languages, dialects, or distinctive speech patterns. In 1770, fearing he had been pre-empted by

1953-507: The Australian government and various governments and international organisations. In August Australia welcomed its 50,000th "New Australian" — or rather, the 50,000th displaced person sponsored by the IRO and to be resettled in Australia. The child was from Riga , Latvia . Work began on the Snowy Mountains Scheme – a substantial employer of migrants: 100,000 people were employed from at least 30 different nationalities. Seventy percent of all

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2016-758: The Australian population lived overseas, one of the lowest proportions worldwide. This ratio is much lower than many other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member developed countries ). The data in the table is sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics . The population estimates do not include the Aboriginal population before 1961. Estimates of Aboriginal population prior to European settlement range from 300,000 to one million, with archaeological finds indicating

2079-510: The Australian resident population, or 7,529,570 people, were born overseas. The following table shows Australia's population by country of birth as estimated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2021. It shows only countries or regions or birth with a population of over 100,000 residing in Australia (for more information about immigration see Immigration to Australia and Foreign-born population of Australia ): Although Australia has no official language, English has always been entrenched as

2142-670: The British, and this caused some alarm in the Australian government, causing it to place restrictions on Southern Europeans sponsoring newcomers and to commence the "Bring out a Briton" campaign. With the increase in financial assistance to British settlers provided during the 1960s, the British component was able to return to the top position in the overall number of new settlers. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans migrated to Australia and over 1,000,000 Britons immigrated with financial assistance. The migration assistance scheme initially targeted citizens of Commonwealth countries; but it

2205-514: The French, James Cook changed a hilltop signal-drill on Possession Island in Torres Strait , into a possession ceremony, fabricating Britain's claim of Australia's east coast. Eighteen years later, the east coast was occupied by Britain and later the west coast was also settled by Britain. At that time, the indigenous population was estimated to have been between 315,000 and 750,000. At

2268-563: The arrival of immigrants to Australia after World War II, they are still major demographic groups in Australia: This compares with 18% of Australian residents who were aged 60 or over at the time of the census Not all of those enumerated would have arrived as post-war migrants, specific statistics as at 2006 are not available. In September 2022, the Albanese government increased the permanent migration intake from 160,000 to

2331-423: The camp closed in 1971, some 300,000 migrants had spent time there. By 1951, the government had established three migrant reception centres for non-English speaking displaced persons from Europe, and twenty holding centres, principally to house non-working dependants, when the pressure of arrival numbers on the reception centres was too great to keep families together. The purpose of reception and training centres

2394-546: The centuries since European settlement has resulted in a distinctive Australian culture. As the Asian Australian population continues to expand and flourish as a result of changes in the demographic makeup of immigrants and as there has been increased economic and cultural intercourse with Asian nations, Australia has observed the gradual emergence of a "Eurasian society" within its major urban hubs, blending both European and Asian material and popular culture within

2457-521: The end of 1954 to resettle in Australia from Europe—more than the number of convicts transported to Australia in the first 80 years after European settlement. Following the attacks on Darwin and the associated fear of Imperial Japanese invasion in World War II, the Chifley government commissioned a report on the subject which found that Australia was in urgent need of a larger population for

2520-694: The first Australian settlers came from London, the Midlands and the North of England , and Ireland. Settlers that arrived throughout the 19th century were from all parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, a significant proportion of settlers came from the Southwest and Southeast of England, from Ireland and from Scotland. In 1888, 60 percent of the Australian population had been born in Australia, and almost all had British ancestral origins. Out of

2583-408: The first time. A 1958 government leaflet assured voters that unskilled non-British migrants were needed for "labour on rugged projects ...work which is not generally acceptable to Australians or British workers." The Australian economy stood in sharp contrast to war-ravaged Europe, and newly arrived migrants found employment in a booming manufacturing industry and government assisted programmes such as

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2646-511: The largest immigrant groups during the post-war era. During the 1950s, Australia was the destination of 30 per cent of Dutch emigrants and the Netherlands-born became numerically the second largest non-British group in Australia. In 1971, 70 percent of the foreign born were of European origin. Italian Australians are Australians of Italian ancestry, and comprise the largest non Anglo-Celtic European ethnic group in Australia, with

2709-448: The largest non-British Isles ancestry for most of the 19th century. Between 1901 and 1940, 140,000 non-British European immigrants arrived in Australia (about 16 percent of the total intake). Before World War II, 13.6 percent were born overseas, and 80 percent of those were British. Following the Second World War , large numbers of continental Europeans immigrated to Australia, with Italian Australians and Greek Australians being among

2772-476: The late 1970s, following the end of the White Australia policy in 1973, a large and continuing wave of immigration to Australia from around the world has continued into the 21st century, with Asia now being the largest source of immigrants. A smaller proportion of Australians are descended from indigenous people , comprising Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders . The development of

2835-417: The majority of the population in Australia. The largest statistical grouping of European Australians are Anglo-Celtic Australians , Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles . This includes English Australians , Irish Australians , Scottish Australians and Welsh Australians . Anglo-Celtic Australians have been highly influential in shaping the nation's character. By

2898-427: The mid-1840s, the numbers of freeborn settlers had overtaken the convict population. Although some observers stress Australia's convict history, the vast majority of early settlers came of their own free will. Far more Australians are descended from assisted immigrants than from convicts, the majority of Colonial Era settlers being British and Irish. About 20 percent of Australians are descendants of convicts. Most of

2961-559: The number of ancestry responses categorised within the Asian groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 17.4% (including 6.5% Southern and Central Asian , 6.4% North-East Asian , and 4.5% South-East Asian ). This figure excludes Australians of Middle Eastern ancestry, who are separately categorised within the North African and Middle Eastern group. Chinese Australians are Australians of Chinese ancestry, forming

3024-483: The one-millionth post-war immigrant arrived in Australia. Australia's population reached 10 million in 1959, up from 7 million in 1945. In 1973, Whitlam government (1972–1975) adopted a completely non-discriminatory immigration policy, effectively putting an end to the White Australia policy. However, the change occurred in the context of a substantial reduction in the overall migrant intake. This ended

3087-459: The post-war wave of immigration Australia has experienced average arrivals of around one million per decade. The breakdown by decade is as follows: The highest number of arrivals during the period was 185,099 in 1969–70 and the lowest was 52,752 in 1975–76. In the 2006 census, birthplace was enumerated as was date of arrival in Australia for those not born in Australia. For the major post-war period non-English speaking immigrant groups enlarged by

3150-423: The post-war wave of predominantly European immigration which had started three decades before with the end of the Second World War and would make the beginnings of the contemporary wave of predominantly Asian Immigration to Australia which continues to the present day. Financial assistance was an important element of the post war immigration program and as such there were a number of agreements in place between

3213-444: The purposes of defence and development and it recommended a 1% annual increase in population through increased immigration. In 1945, the government established the federal Department of Immigration to administer the new immigration program. The first Minister for Immigration was Arthur Calwell . An Assisted Passage Migration Scheme was also established in 1945 to encourage Britons to migrate to Australia. The government's objective

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3276-424: The remaining 40 percent, 34 percent had been born in the British Isles , and 6 percent were of European origin, mainly from Germany and Scandinavia . The census of 1901 showed that 98 percent of Australians had Anglo-Celtic ancestral origins. In 1939 and 1945, still 98 percent of Australians had Anglo-Celtic ancestral origins. Until 1947, the vast majority of the population were of British origin. Germans formed

3339-562: The second-largest Asian Australian ancestry, comprising 3.1% of the total population. Indian Australians are one of the largest groups within the Indian diaspora. Indians are the youngest average age (34 years) and the fastest growing community both in terms of absolute numbers and percentages in Australia. Migration of Indians to Australia followed the pattern of "from 18th-century sepoys and lascars (soldiers and sailors) aboard visiting European ships, through 19th-century migrant labourers and

3402-621: The single largest non Anglo-Celtic ancestry in the country, constituting 5.5% of those nominating their ancestry at the 2021 census. Chinese Australians are one of the largest groups of Overseas Chinese people, forming the largest Overseas Chinese community in Oceania , and are the largest Asian-Australian community. Per capita , Australia has more people of Chinese ancestry than any country outside Asia. Many Chinese Australians have immigrated from Mainland China, Hong Kong , Macau , and Taiwan as well as Indonesia , Malaysia , Singapore and

3465-491: The six present-day Australian states . Large-scale immigration occurred following a series of gold rushes in the 1850s and after the First and Second World Wars, with many post-World War II migrants coming from Southern Europe , Eastern Europe and The Middle East . Since the end of the White Australia policy in 1973, immigrants to Australia have come from around the world, and from Asia in particular. The predominance of

3528-495: The source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for a racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status, though the Constitutional framers considered the Commonwealth to be "a home for Australians and the British race alone", as well as a "Christian Commonwealth". Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism and has

3591-552: The time of first European contact, of which fewer than twenty are still in daily use by all age groups. About 110 others are spoken exclusively by older people. At the time of the 2006 census, 52,000 Indigenous Australians, representing 12% of the Indigenous population, reported that they spoke an Indigenous language at home. Australia has a sign language known as Auslan , which is the main language of about 10,112 deaf people who reported that they use Auslan language at home in

3654-669: The workers were migrants. On arrival in Australia, many migrants went to migrant reception and training centres where they learned some English while they looked for a job. The Department of Immigration was responsible for the camps and kept records on camp administration and residents. The migrant reception and training centres were also known as Commonwealth Immigration Camps, migrant hostels, immigration dependants' holding centres, migrant accommodation, or migrant workers' hostels. Australia's first migrant reception centre opened at Bonegilla, Victoria near Wodonga in December 1947. When

3717-436: The world over, early Chinese immigrants to Australia established several Chinatowns in major cities, such as Sydney ( Chinatown, Sydney ), Melbourne ( Chinatown, Melbourne , since the 1850s) and Brisbane ( Chinatown, Brisbane ), Perth ( Chinatown, Perth ), as well as in regional towns associated with the goldfields such as Cairns ( Cairns Chinatown ). Indian Australians are Australians of Indian ancestry, and are

3780-511: Was gradually extended to other countries such as the Netherlands and Italy. The qualifications were straightforward: migrants needed to be in sound health and under the age of 45 years. There were initially no skill requirements, although under the White Australia policy, people from mixed-race backgrounds found it very difficult to take advantage of the scheme. Migration brought large numbers of southern and central Europeans to Australia for

3843-481: Was soon apparent that even with assisted passage the government target would be impossible to achieve given that Britain's shipping capacity was quite diminished from pre-war levels. As a consequence, the government looked further afield to maintain overall immigration numbers, and this meant relying on the IRO refugees from Eastern Europe, with the US providing the necessary shipping. Many Eastern Europeans were refugees from

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3906-487: Was summarised in the slogan "populate or perish". Calwell stated in 1947, to critics of mass immigration from non-British Europe: "We have 25 years at most to populate this country before the yellow races are down on us." The post-war immigration program of the Chifley government gave them preference to migrants from Great Britain , and initially an ambitious target was set of nine British out of ten immigrants. However, it

3969-949: Was to: provide for general medical examination and x-ray of migrants, issue of necessary clothing, payment of social service benefits, interview to determine employment potential, instruction in English and the Australian way of life generally. The centres were located throughout Australia (dates are those of post office opening and closing. ) Other hostels in New South Wales included Adamstown , Balgownie , Bankstown , Berkeley , Bunnerong, Burwood , Cabramatta , Cronulla , Dundas , East Hills , Ermington , Goulburn , Katoomba , Kingsgrove , Kyeemagh , Leeton , Lithgow , Mascot , Matraville , Mayfield , Meadowbank , Nelson Bay , North Head , Orange , Parkes , Port Stephens, Randwick , St Marys , Scheyville , Schofields , Unanderra , Villawood , Wallerawang and Wallgrove . In

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