The first
Pole known to have arrived in
Australia was
Joseph Potaski, who was sent there as a convict from the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1803. A prominent Pole,
Paul Edmund Strzelecki arrived at
Sydney on 25 April 1839. At the request of the governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, Strzelecki made a geological and mineralogical survey of the
Gippsland region in present-day eastern
Victoria, where he made many discoveries including gold in 1839. That year, Strzelecki and a crew set out from Sydney on an expedition into the
Australian Alps. In 1840, he climbed the highest peak on mainland Australia and named it
Mount Kosciuszko. He reached
Melbourne on 28 May 1840. From 1840 to 1842 Strzelecki explored
Tasmania (then known as
Van Diemen's Land). Having travelled 11,000 kilometres (7,000 miles) through New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, examining the geology along the way Strzelecki returned to England, where he was awarded in May 1846 the
Founder's Medal of the
Royal Geographical Society. The first settlers from Poland arrived in
South Australia in 1856 and settled in the
Clare Valley region in a place later called
Polish Hill River. The first
mass migration happened in the late 1940s when large groups of
displaced persons who could not return to communist Poland (the
Polish People's Republic)
migrated to Australia after
World War II, including soldiers from the
Polish Independent Carpathian Brigade. Between 1947 and 1954, the Poland-born population increased from 6,573 to 56,594 people. In the early 1980s there was further Polish migration to Australia. The emergence of the
Solidarity trade union movement and the declaration of
martial law in Poland at the end of 1981 coincided with a further relaxation of Polish emigration laws. During the period 1980–1991 Australia granted permanent entry to a large number of Polish migrants, many arriving as refugees who soon got a reputation for being hard working. In 1991, an independent, voluntary organisation was established to inform the Australian public about issues related to Polish history, politics, society and culture. The immediate trigger for establishing the
Australian Institute of Polish Affairs was strong public interest in the historic changes that swept
Central Europe in 1989 and led to the
collapse of communism. Some Australians have Polish-Jewish roots. They organised the
Association of Polish Jews and Their Descendants. Both organisations are based in Melbourne.
Mount Kosciuszko, the
highest mountain in Australia (not including its external territories), was named by the Polish explorer Count
Paul Edmund Strzelecki in 1840, in honour of the Polish and American national hero and hero of the
Kościuszko Uprising and the
American Revolutionary War General
Tadeusz Kościuszko, because Strzelecki perceived resemblance to the
Kościuszko Mound in
Kraków. ==Demographics==