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.
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.
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.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
Bilateral relations
After establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1972, Australia established an embassy in Beijing in 1973. The Australia-China bilateral relationship is based on strong economic and trade complementarities and longstanding community and cultural links.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The culture of Australia's Aboriginal people is one of the oldest in the world – Aboriginal Australian Culture dates back more than 60,000 years! There are many archaeological sites throughout the country where the long history of Indigenous people can be found.
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.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
A bronze infant Buddha figurine discovered on the Western Australian coast has been confirmed to be a rare Ming dynasty relic. The pair who discovered the treasure will auction it for around $100,000, after the UK's Antiques Roadshow revealed its value.
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.
The majority of Chinese immigrants to Australia during the gold rush were indentured or contract labourers. However, many made the voyage under the credit-ticket system managed by brokers and emigration agents.