Have you ever visited Australia? Otherwise, you may have heard of the continent's hot and dry deserts, as well as its vast undergrowth. Does this mean Australia is a country mostly made up of rugged border Bushmen?
Of course, this continent contains immense desert areas. Although Australia is roughly the size of the continental United States, the Australian population is less than 7% of the United States population. However, Australia can best be described as a nation of city dwellers. More than half of the 13 million inhabitants live in cities.
And these are not primitive “border towns”. Conversely, you will see in some of the skyscrapers, traffic jams and bustling pedestrians characteristic of New York, London or any other major city in the world. Tourists can find a large number of hotels and motels that take care of their accommodation. There are restaurants that cater to the tastes of almost all nationalities.
An unusual fact about the Australian business is its rapid growth over the past few years. Since 1945, the population has grown by nearly six million. Where do they all come from? The manager of an iron mining town in the west said of the townspeople: “Most of them are not of Australian descent, like me, I'm 17 in this country, but I was born in Germany. We are a cauldron and it's okay. “Post-war immigration represents around 40% of the continent's population.
Why are the Australian people so much a product of immigration? A quick glance at some historical highlights will be interesting.
The first Australian migrants
The aborigines of Australia apparently came from Asia via the Indonesian archipelago. Their descendants are now called "aborigines", from the Latin expression "aborigines", which means "from the beginning". The Aborigines remained mostly nomads and only built emergency shelters without harvest.
But don't be fooled by the primitive way of life that many of these native Australians choose for themselves. This does not indicate a lack of intelligence. As one of the first managers of the establishment remarked, “they just don't think like us”. The Encyclopædia Britannica (1976 edition) shows that the strong Aboriginal mentality indicates that there are approximately 260 native Australian languages. “Each tribe speaks at least one different dialect, but bilingualism and multilingualism are common in many areas. . . . Australian languages often have significant grammatical complexity. ""
During the 16th and 18th centuries a. When few people lived in Australia, explorers from Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and Great Britain discovered parts of the continent and mapped the coast. But they did not try to settle here. In 1770, Captain James Cook claimed the eastern parts of Australia for Great Britain.
Immigration began soon after, but in a very unusual way. How is it? At the start of the 19th century, Great Britain sent prisoners to its thirteen American colonies. The loss of these colonies in 1776 encouraged Britain to seek new land suitable for judgment. The first colony was established in Sydney, New South Wales, in south-eastern Australia in 1788. The convicted felons who were transported from the UK to Australia were its first "migrants". Many of them remained in Australia after their arrest.
The fascination with natural resources
As for the free people, few started to settle in Australia. Indeed, at the time, a free stay was not advised. But something happened that changed everything. What?
Gold was discovered in Australia in the mid-19th century. Overnight it became an attraction for adventurers around the world. Germans, Hungarians, Scandinavians, Poles, Americans and Chinese ran around the gold field. It suddenly shut down the transport sector.
In addition to gold, Australia has found reserves of other precious metals such as nickel, copper, aluminum, zinc and iron. A worker at an iron mine in Western Australia recently stated: “This mineral deposit is one of the richest in the world. It is 40 km long, 4,000 feet wide and 150 meters deep. And when it's out of stock, there's more. In fact, new research has shown that Australia has huge new reserves of precious metals.
Despite its natural resources, Australia had only 7,491,000 people at the end of World War II, that is, about two and a half people per square kilometer (or one per square kilometer). . There was a great shortage of homes, schools and hospitals. Coal and steel production decreased; Transport service as well. Power outages throughout cities were frequent. There was an important need for labor. How could it be filled?
The composition of a "cauldron"
In 1945, the government made regulations for planned immigration. It was a fitting time for such an attempt, as many people in war-torn Europe were trying to exchange their fates for the prospect of a new life in Australia.
The first migrant network after World War II quickly became a flood. It is estimated that more than 3,000,000 migrants arrived in Australia after this global conflict. This included citizens of Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria and, more recently, South America. About 65% of newcomers received financial support from the Australian government. Many settled under the protection of the government. Thanks to this comprehensive immigration program, Australia's population has almost doubled since 1945.
But was it wise to bring such different people together? Critics initially said the immigration program would end in disaster. They recalled that before that, great bitterness had developed among the Chinese and white gold mines. Furthermore, the importation of cheap labor into the sugar cane fields in the tropical north had triggered violent resentment against migrants of all non-Anglo nationalities. Would the immigration proposal exacerbate old disputes and an explosion of violence?
The waves of migration with their foreign languages and cultures and their different habits of work, life and food originally aroused some resentment. In addition to these features, the "new Australians" (as immigrants were called) sometimes worked faster. This has created resentment among some "old" Australian workers, possibly due to feelings of insecurity about keeping their jobs. "They call us foreigners, these Australians," observed a Portuguese farmer based in Carnarvon, in the far west of Australia. "We do not like Australians because we work so hard to grow vegetables - tomatoes, all kinds of green peppers. We know how. We like to work. I sent 1100 boxes of tomatoes this morning."
In addition to these problems, some of the migrants suffered from psychological problems. For many, the lifestyle change has been spectacular. Nostalgia was widespread. The children also learned English faster than their parents. Young people should act as interpreters and take on other family responsibilities for non-English-speaking parents. Children found themselves between strict parental control in southern Europe and the forms of freedom of Australian society.
Take advantage of many cultures
Overall, however, there were no really serious problems. Workers of different nationalities found that they could learn from each other. In fact, without migrants, the industry would not have developed as before. In addition to English, several other languages can be heard in Australian families and on the streets.
Posters are often displayed in stores indicating the number of languages their employees speak. A newspaper from a steel mill in Wollongong, New South Wales, has sections in four different languages. This corresponds to the needs of about 20,000 employees, of which about half are immigrants with about 40 different nationalities.
Seniors from different ethnic groups try to keep their cultures separate and add color and diversity to the Australian scene. There are Italian sugarcane towns, Greek fishing villages and German vineyards. A Chinese incense house is also here in the "land below". It has such a unique architecture that it deserves the state protection afforded to historic buildings.
