Welsh Australians

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Welsh Australians" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Welsh. (January 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Welsh Wikipedia article at [[:cy:Awstraliaid Cymreig]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|cy|Awstraliaid Cymreig}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Welsh Australians

Awstraliaid Cymreig (Welsh)
Welsh Australian Flag
Total population
156,108 (by ancestry, 2021)[1] (0.6% of the Australian population) 29,250 (by birth, 2021)
Languages
Australian English, Welsh
Religion
Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Baptism, Methodism, Catholicism, Irreligion
Related ethnic groups
Welsh, Scottish Australians, Irish Australians, Cornish Australians, English Australians, Welsh New Zealanders, Welsh Argentines, Welsh Americans, Welsh Canadians

Welsh Australians (Welsh: Awstraliaid Cymreig) are citizens of Australia whose ancestry originates in Wales.

According to the 2006 Australian census 25,317 Australian residents were born in Wales,^[2] while 113,242 (0.44%) claimed Welsh ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry.^[3]

The name Jones, common in Wales, although the name first arrived from England in the middle ages, is one of the most common surnames in Australia, accounting for over 1% of Australians, which suggests a higher rate of Welsh ancestry than indicated by self-identification.^{[citation needed]}

A 1996 study gives the total ethnic strength of Welsh Australians as 243,400. This is made up by 44,100 of un-mixed origin and 683,700 of mixed origin.^[4] This would make the Welsh the fifth largest Anglo-Celtic group in Australia after the English, Irish, Scottish and Cornish.

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Welsh Australians" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

It is believed that the eastern coast of Australia reminded Captain James Cook of the coast of South Wales (especially the Vale of Glamorgan coast, which he knew), hence the name he gave to it, "New South Wales". The first European colony in Australia was in New South Wales, beginning with the First Fleet of 1788. Welsh people numbered amongst these first settlers, and continued to arrive in the new colony through the British policy of penal transportation that was implemented for many criminal acts.^{[citation needed]}

Mass emigration from Wales to Australia began in the nineteenth century with New South Wales and Victoria being popular destinations. Nineteenth-century Welsh settlers were mostly farmers, followed later by gold diggers and coal miners.^{[citation needed]}

A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, and the Eureka Stockade rebellion in 1854 was an early expression of nationalist sentiment. Amongst its leaders was the Welsh-born Chartist John Basson Humffray, one of a significant group of immigrants that came over from Wales at this time.^{[citation needed]}

• Welsh New Zealanders

• Lloyd, Lewis. (1988) Australians from Wales Caernarfon: Gwynedd Archives. ISBN 0-901337-47-1