Immigration to Australia

Common card · No. 231860

The Australian continent was first settled when ancestors of Indigenous Australians arrived via the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and New Guinea over 50,000 years ago. European colonisation began in 1788 with the establishment of a British penal colony in New South Wales. Starting at independence in 1901, Australia maintained the White Australia policy for much of the 20th century, which forbade the entrance in Australia of people of non-European ethnic origins. Following World War II, the policy was gradually relaxed, and was abolished entirely in 1973. Since 1945, more than 7 million people have settled in Australia. Between 1788 and the mid-20th century, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from Britain and Ireland (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. In the decades immediately following World War II, Australia received a large wave of immigration from across Europe, with...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Toby Hudson based on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CC BY-SA 3.0 au