Australia, New South Wales & Sydney. Population change 1788 - 2006
[1] The Aboriginal settlement of Australia at 1788
The falsehood that Australia was “terra nullius” and “res nullius” when the British established the penal settlement at Sydney Cove has been a convenient deceit perpetuated across the centuries by an acquisitive culture and 18th century philosophical rationales and laws. The inconvenient truth is that the Australian continent was settled and its lands managed, forty to sixty thousand years earlier than the settlement of England itself.
The map at [1] indicates the pattern of Aboriginal settlement across Australia when the British arrived. The territory about Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson) was settled by clans of the Eora people. The story of their dispossession is one of skirmishes and atrocities committed by the intruders with advanced weaponry against the aborigines spears. By 1839, fifty years after the founding of Sydney, in the name of the British Crown, territories had been annexed, settlements established and colonies founded across the Australian vasteness of ca. 7700 sqKm and some 3600km from southern to northern tip and 4000km east to west; see [2]
[2] Australian States and Territories 1788-1989
The log-scaled graph at [3] shows the change in the population of Australia, New South Wales and Sydney between 1788 and 2006. Reading the graph from left to right, when the British dismbarked at Sydney Cove in 1788 there were ca. 315,000 Aborigines settled in multiple language regions across Australia, with about 48,000 across NSW; with some uncertainty as to whether this means NSW as it was then or today; see the yellow regions mapped at [2].
As the immigrant populations increased, the Aboriginal populations declined to about 73,800 across Australia at 1911 (red symbols) and to about 7,400 across NSW at 1901 (black symbols). The corresponding numbers at the 2006 census were about 460,000 Australia and 140,000 NSW.
From a population of about 10881 at 1788, by 1911, the immigrant population of Sydney had grown to almost 657,000; that of NSW to almost 1,700,000; and that of Australia to about 4,500,000. At the 2006 census the corresponding numbers were about 4,300,000 for Sydney; 6,900,000 for NSW; 20,800,000 Australia of all peoples..
[3] Change in the 'All-ages' populations of Australia, NSW and Sydney 1788-2006
Data for [3] are given at [4]. Data about immigrants derive from musters and censuses; data about Australia's Aborigines are estimates; they were not included in censuses in the same terms as other humans until 1971; sources for each data series,are tabulated [5]
[4] Data for [3]
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