The first clear example of Buddhist settlement in Australia dates to 1858. However, there has been speculation from some
anthropologists that there may have been contact hundreds of years earlier; in the book
Aboriginal Men of High Degree, A.P. Elkin cites what he believes is evidence that traders from
Indonesia may have brought fleeting contact with
Buddhism and
Hinduism to areas near modern-day
Dampier. Elkin interpreted a link between
Indigenous Australian culture and Buddhist ideas such as
reincarnation. The first Buddhist group to arrive in Australia was a troupe of acrobats and jugglers from
Japan who toured in 1867. More arrived throughout the century, mostly involved in the pearling industry in northern Australia, reaching an estimate of 3600 on
Thursday Island, and also in
Broome and
Darwin, Northern Territory. The first
Sinhalese Buddhists from
Sri Lanka arrived in 1870 to work in
sugarcane plantations. A community was believed to exist on Thursday Island in 1876. In 1882, a group of 500 left
Colombo for
Queensland, mostly in
Mackay. The oldest remaining structure attesting to the establishment of Buddhism in Australia are two
Bodhi Trees planted on Thursday Island in the 1890s, although the temple which once stood there no longer exists. During the 20th century, the number of Buddhists gradually declined due to emigration and a lack of immigration caused by the
White Australia Policy. In 1891, the American Buddhist, Colonel
Henry Steel Olcott, who was the co-founder of
Theosophical Society came to Australia and participated in a lecture series, which led to a greater awareness of Buddhism in small circles of mainly upper-class society. One of the members of the Theosophical Society was future
Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, who had spent three months in
India and Sri Lanka in 1890 and wrote a book which discussed spiritual matters, including Buddhism. The first instance of a monk arriving in Australia was in 1910, when U Sasana Dhaja, born E.H. Stevenson in
Yarmouth, arrived from
Burma. Over the years, various monks visited Australia, but it was not until the 1970s that a resident monk (named Venerable Somaloka) arrived from Sri Lanka. The first specific Buddhist group, the Buddhist Study Group Melbourne, was formed in
Melbourne in 1938 by Len Bullen, but it collapsed during the
Second World War. The Buddhist Society of Victoria was formed in 1953, and in 1956 the Buddhist Society of New South Wales was formed. From the 1950s until the 1970s, the Buddhist Societies were lay organizations which self-discussed Buddhism. of
Fo Guang Shan Chinese Buddhism, in
Wollongong. In the late 1970s, Buddhism began to become more widespread, mainly due to immigration from
South East Asia following the
Vietnam War, as well as the spread to Western countries of
Tibetan Buddhism, led by figures such as
Lama Yeshe, who established religious institutions with resident monks, and
Sogyal Rinpoche, during the 1980s, the founder of the Rigpa organization. This was supplemented by further immigration from
Asia in the proceeding decades. In 2009 in Australia four women received
bhikkhuni ordination as Theravada nuns, the first time such ordination had occurred in Australia. It was performed in Perth, Australia, on 22 October 2009 at Bodhinyana Monastery. Abbess Vayama together with Venerables
Nirodha, Seri, and Hasapanna were ordained as Bhikkhunis by a dual Sangha act of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis in full accordance with the Pali Vinaya. Buddhism used to have the
highest percentage growth of all religions in Australia, having had an increase of 79 percent in the number of adherents from the 1996 to the 2001 census. Since the 1986 census, the number of adherents has increased from 80,387 to around 370,345 in 2001. However, it started to decline from 2.5 percent in 2011 to 2.4 percent in 2016, although there is still an increase of about 34,700 Buddhists in the number of adherents. ==Buddhist temples==