Pre-history migration of Indians (2300 BC–2000 BC) A study of
Indigenous Australian DNA has found that Indigenous Australians may have mixed with people of Indian origin about 4,200 years ago. The same study showed that flint tools and Indian dogs may have been introduced from India at about this time. A 2012 paper reports that there is also evidence of a substantial genetic flow from
India to northern Australia estimated at slightly over four thousand years ago, a time when changes in tool technology and food processing appear in the Australian archaeological record, suggesting that these may be related. One genetic study in 2012 by Irina Pugach and colleagues at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has suggested that about 4,000 years before the
First Fleet landed in Australia (in 1788), some Indian explorers had settled in Australia and
assimilated into the local population in roughly 2217 BC. The study by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology found that there was a migration of genes from India to Australia around 2000 BC. The researchers had two theories for this: either some Indians had contact with people in Indonesia who eventually transferred those genes from India to Aboriginal Australians, or that a group of Indians migrated all the way from India to Australia and intermingled with the locals directly.
Indian connection with European exploration of Australia (1627–1787) Most early explorations of Australia by various European colonial powers had an Indian connection. Indians had been employed for a long time on the European ships trading in
Colonial India and the
East Indies. Many of the early voyages to the Pacific either started or terminated in India and many of these ships were wrecked in the uncharted waters of the
South Pacific. In 1606, the
Dutch East India Company's ship,
Duyfken, led by
Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia. In 1627 the south coast of Australia was accidentally discovered by the
Dutch East India Company explorer
François Thijssen and named '
t Land van Pieter Nuyts, in honour of the highest ranking passenger,
Pieter Nuyts, extraordinary Councillor of India. In 1628 a squadron of Dutch East India Company ships was sent by the
Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Pieter de Carpentier to explore the northern coast. These ships made extensive examinations, particularly in the
Gulf of Carpentaria, named in honour of de Carpentier.
Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808), the Examiner of Sea Journals for the British
East India Company, whilst translating some Spanish documents captured by Indian
sepoys during the
1762 CE occupation of Philippines by the British India, found Portuguese navigator
Luis Váez de Torres's testimony which led Dalrymple to discover and publish in 1770–1771 the existence of an unknown continent which he named as
Terra Australis (or Southern Continent), this aroused widespread interest and prompted the British government in 1769 to order
James Cook in
HM Bark Endeavour to seek out the Southern Continent, which was discovered in June 1767 by
Samuel Wallis in and named by him King George Island. The London press reported in June 1768 that two ships would be sent to the newly discovered island and from there to "attempt the Discovery of the Southern Continent". The British
East India Trade Committee recommended in 1823 that a settlement be established on the coast of northern Australia to forestall the Dutch, and
Captain J.J.G. Bremer, RN, was commissioned to form a settlement between
Bathurst Island and the
Cobourg Peninsula.
Colonial era (1788–1900) , Victoria Indian immigration from
British India to Australia began
early in history of Australian colony. The first Indians arrived in Australia with the
British settlers who had been
living in India. The
people of the first British fleet to establish a new colony, which landed on 26 January 1788, included seamen, marines and their families, government officials, and a large number of
convicts, including women and children. All had been tried and convicted in
Great Britain and almost all of them in England. However, many are known to have come to England from other parts of Great Britain and, especially, from Ireland; at least 12 were identified as black (born in India, Britain, Africa, the West Indies, North America, or a European country or its colony). In 1788, Indian crews from
Bay of Bengal came to Australia on trading ships. After establishment of
first European colony in Sydney in Australia in 1788 by the colonial
British Indian Empire under the British East India Company, the company had exclusive right on control of all trade to and from the penal colony. These colonies multiplied and expanded to include whole Australia, various Islands in Oceania, initially colonies were established under the British Indian Empire including New Zealand which was administered as part of New South Wales until 1841. Between 1788 and 1868 on board 806 ships in all about 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies,
1% were from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong and slaves from the Caribbean.
British colonial convict ships from Britain and elsewhere to Australia frequently stopped over in India, many of which were built in India, and among those ships with convicts started the initial sail from India include
HMS Duchess of York which sailed from
Bengal in India and arrived at
Port Jackson on 4 April 1807 carrying merchandise and rice also
transported two military
convicts,
Hunter arrived on 20 August 1810,
Indian arrived on 16 December 1810,
Amboyna arrived in Australia on 1 January 1822,
Cawdry arrived on 1 January 1826 from India and
Ceylon,
Edward Lombes on 6 January 1833, In the late 1830s, more Indians started to arrive in Australia as
indentured labourers when the
penal transport of
convicts to
New South Wales (which at the time also consisted of
Queensland and
Victoria) was slowing, before being abolished altogether in 1840. The lack of manual labourers from the convict assignment system led to an increase demand for foreign labour, which was partly filled by the arrival of Indians who came from an agrarian background in India, and thus fulfilled their tasks as farm labourers on cane fields and shepherds on
sheep stations well. In 1844,
P. Friell who had previously lived in India, brought 25 domestic workers from
India to Sydney and these included a few women and children. Among the earliest Indians was a
Hindu Sindhi merchant, Shri Pammull, who after arrived in 1850s built a family
opal trade in
Melbourne which still prosperously continues with his fourth-generation descendants. "Initially, the migrants from India were indentured labourers, who worked on sheep stations and farms around Australia. Some adventurers followed during the
gold rush of the 1850s. A census from 1861 indicates that there were around 200 Indians in Victoria of whom 20 were in Ballarat, the town which was at the epicenter of the gold rush. Thereafter, many more came and worked as hawkers - going from house to house, town to town, traversing thousands of kilometers, making a living by selling a variety of products." From the 1860s, Indians, most of them
Sikh, worked as merchants, industrialists, and businessmen to operate throughout outback Australia, as 'pioneers of the inland'. The 1881 census records 998 people who were born in India but this had grown to over 1700 by 1891. Majority of cameleers, including Indian cameleers, were Muslims with a sizeable minority were Sikhs from
Punjab region, they set up camel-breeding stations and rest house outposts, known as
caravanserai, throughout inland Australia, creating a permanent link between the coastal cities and the remote cattle and sheep grazing stations until about the 1930s, when they were largely replaced by the
automobile. According to the 1911 census, there were only 3698 'Indians' signifying a large decrease, with the trend continuing, with only approximately 2200 'Indians' in the country in 1921. After
1901 Immigration Restriction Act was introduced by the Australian Government the migration [of non-white migrants] from India was curtailed, but following
India's independence from Britain in 1947, the number of Indian-born Anglo-western white British citizens emigrating to Australia increased, along with migration of mixed race European-Indians, such as
Anglo-Indians, Dutch Anglo-Indians and
Portuguese Indians. The 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, one of the first laws passed by the new
Australian parliament, which was the centrepiece of the
White Australia Policy aimed to restrict immigration from Asia, where the population was vastly greater and the standard of living vastly lower and was similar to measures taken in other settler societies such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand. While Labor Party wanted to protect "white" jobs and pushed for clearer restrictions,
Free Trade Party's MP
Bruce Smith said he had
"no desire to see low-class Indians, Chinamen or Japanese...swarming into this country... But there is obligation...not (to) unnecessarily offend the educated classes of those nations". Personnel with an Indian Sikh man during WWII. During
World War I (1914–1918) Indian and Australian troops were deployed together in several sectors, including in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Egypt and Turkey. During
Gallipoli Campaign the
Australians and New Zealanders troops were deployed to
take part in the operation, although they were outnumbered by the British, Indian and French contingents, a fact which is often overlooked today by many Australians and New Zealanders. Australian nurses also staffed 10 British colonial hospitals in India. During
World War II (1939–1945) the
hundreds of Australians were posted to British units in Burma and India. Hundreds of Australians also served with RAF units in India and Burma, and in May 1943 330 Australians were serving in forty-one squadrons in India, of which only nine had more than ten Australians. In addition, many of the RAN's corvettes and destroyers served with the British
Eastern Fleet where they were normally used to
protect convoys in the Indian Ocean from attacks by Japanese and German submarines.
Under multiculturalism The end of White Australia policy saw a boom in migration of middle-class skilled professionals, by 2016 over 2 in every 3 migrants who arrived were skilled professionals mainly from India, UK, China, South Africa and Philippines,
"to work as doctors and nurses, human-resources and marketing professionals, business managers, IT specialists, and engineers...who were not fleeing war or poverty. The Indians in Australia are predominantly male, while the Chinese are majority female." Indians are the largest migrant ethnic group in Melbourne and Adelaide, fourth largest in Brisbane, and likely to jump from third place to second place in Sydney by 2021. In Melbourne, Indian Australians primarily live in the outer western, middle-outer southeastern, and the outer northern areas, with large concentrations in the suburbs of
Tarneit,
Truganina,
Craigieburn,
Dandenong (The location of the city's Little India precinct),
Clayton,
Glen Waverley,
Clyde North, and
Pakenham, with high numbers in
the CBD as well . In Sydney,
Parramatta [and neighbouring suburbs such as
Harris Park and
Westmead, etc.] have higher concentration of migrants. By 2019, the number of Indians grew at nine times the annual national average growth, and number of overseas student visas and post-study work visas also exploded. Between 2007 and 2010, the
violence against Indians in Australia controversy took place, and a subsequent Indian Government investigation concluded that, of 152 reported
racially motivated assaults against Indian students in Australia in 2009, 23 involved racial overtones. In the year 2007–2008, 1,447 Indians had been victims of crime including assaults and robberies in the state of Victoria in Australia. In either case, the Victorian police refused to release the data for public scrutiny, the stated reason being that it was "problematic: as well as 'subjective and open to interpretation'". Indian media have accused the Australian authorities of being
denialist. On 9 June 2009, Indian Prime Minister, addressing the Indian Parliament said that "he was 'appalled' by the senseless violence and crime, some of which are racist in nature," Indian students held protests in Melbourne and Sydney, which were sparked by an earlier attack on Indians by
Lebanese Australian men. In 2017–18
India was the largest source of
new permanent annual migrants to Australia since 2016, and overall third largest source nation of cumulative total migrant population behind England and China. 20.5%, or 33,310 out of 162,417
Australian permanent resident visas, went to Indians, who also additionally had 70,000 students were studying in Australian universities and colleges. The attacker in the
2025 Bondi Beach shooting, Sajid Akram, was an Indian national with permanent residency who initially moved to Australia in 1998 on a
student visa. ==Demographics==