<Li> Uniting Church in Australia </Li> <Li> Two by Twos </Li> <P> The first contacts that Islam had with Australia was when Muslim fishermen native to Makassar, which is today a part of Indonesia, visited North - Western Australia long before British settlement in 1788 . This contact of South East Asian ethnic groups of Islamic faith can be identified from the graves they dug for their comrades who died on the journey, being that they face Mecca (in Arabia), in accordance with Islamic regulations concerning burial, as well as evidence from Aboriginal cave paintings and religious ceremonies which depict and incorporate the adoption of Makassan canoe designs and words . </P> <P> In later history, throughout the 19th century following British settlement, other Muslims came to Australia including the Muslim' Afghan' cameleers, who used their camels to transport goods and people through the otherwise unnavigable desert and pioneered a network of camel tracks that later became roads across the Outback . Australia's first mosque was built for them at Marree, South Australia in 1861 . Between the 1860s and 1920s around 2000 cameleers were brought from Afghanistan and the north west of British India (now Pakistan) and perhaps 100 families remained in Australia . Other outback mosques were established at places like Coolgardie, Cloncurry, and Broken Hill--and more permanent mosques in Adelaide, Perth and later Brisbane . A legacy of this pioneer era is the presence of wild camels in Outback and the oldest Islamic structure in the southern hemisphere, at Central Adelaide Mosque . Nonetheless, despite their significant role in Australia prior to the establishment of rail and road networks, the formulation of the White Australia policy at the time of Federation made immigration difficult for the' Afghans' and their memory slowly faded during the 20th century, until a revival of interest began in the 1980s . </P>

Australian bureau of statistics census data summary for religion for 2016