Origins

For over 40,000 years, Australia had been the home of the Aboriginals, the oldest known continuous culture in the world. But Australia’s modern identity derives from the story of European settlement that began in the late eighteenth century and that serves as the inspiration for those who envision Australia as a white, English-speaking, culturally British, and predominantly masculine-oriented society. These images belie the reality of Australia, the diversity of its peoples, and the multiplicity and complexity of its historical experiences.

The island continent of Australia, located in the western Pacific region, is a nation-state covering 7.6 million square kilometres with 17.8 million inhabitants (1991). Formed in 1901 as a federation of the British colonies of New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, Australia is a parliamentary democracy with the British monarch as its head of state. It has many similarities with Canada, including an ongoing need to attract immigrants in order to promote economic growth and development.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Australia’s non-Aboriginal population included not only British Protestants and Irish Catholics – whose own traditional enmities had a great impact on Australian identity – but groups such as German Lutherans, who saw Australia as a place of refuge, as well as Chinese indentured workers and free migrants who shared in common a desire for better economic opportunities. Since then, subsequent waves of immigration have profoundly altered the Australian identity. With the abolition in 1972 of the White Australia policy and the growing proportion of Asians among the new immigration to Australia, there are signs that the country is beginning to come to cultural terms with its geographic position at the edge of the Asia-Pacific region.

There were nearly 14,000 Australian-born persons living in Canada in 1991. The vast majority of them had arrived alone or in the company of their immediate family. Some had come as sojourners in pursuit of adventure or higher education, while others had come in search of better economic opportunities. Many stayed for love. But, considering the similarities between the two countries, it is surprising that there has not been a greater movement of Australians to Canada. In fact, the reverse has been true, with many Canadians leaving the northern hemisphere to go “Down Under.” Sometimes this was at the behest of the mother country, Britain, especially in the nineteenth century when many colonial governors of British North America were sent to the Australian colonies, along with 149 Canadians convicted for their participation in the 1837 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. But more often Canadians have gone to Australia for the same reasons Australians have come to Canada, with one important difference – Australians have rarely come to Canada in search of a better climate.