<P> The history of Chinese Australians provides a unique chapter in the history of Australia . The country has a long history of contact with China, some of which may even predate Captain Cook's arrival in the 18th century . Chinese peoples are now considered to be the oldest continuous immigrants to Australia outside of those from Great Britain . However it was during the Australian Gold Rushes that large numbers of Chinese made their way to Australia . This migration shaped and influenced Australian policy for over a hundred years . Racist fears about Chinese migration was one of the driving factors behind the Australian Federation . Despite these attitudes and restrictions many people with Chinese heritage have left their mark on Australian History...</P> <P> Some historians have theorised that Northern Indigenous Australians may even have had dealings with Chinese traders or come across Chinese goods particularly through trepanging . Sir Joseph Banks was of the opinion that any British colony in Australia could be populated by' useful inhabitants from China' . The first official undisputed link between China and Australia comes from the very beginning of the colony of New South Wales . The First Fleet ships, Scarborough, Charlotte and Lady Penrhyn, after dropping off their convict load, sailed for Canton to buy tea and other goods to sell on their return to England . The Bigge Report attributed the high level of tea drinking to' the existence of an intercourse with China from the foundation of the Colony ...' Many British East India Company ships used Australia as a port of call on their trips to and from buying tea from China . That the ships carrying such cargo had Chinese crew members is likely and that some of the crew and possibly passengers embarked at the port of Sydney is probable . Certainly by 1818, Mak Sai Ying (also known as John Shying) had arrived and after a period of farming became, in 1829, the publican of The Lion in Parramatta . John Macarthur, a prominent pastoralist, employed three Chinese people on his properties in the 1820s and records may well have neglected others . Another way ethnic Chinese made it to Australia was from the new British possessions of Malaysia and Singapore . </P> <P> Individuals such as Macarthur's employees were part of the varied mix that was early Sydney Town . It was the increasing demand for labour after convict transportation ceased in the 1840s that led to much larger numbers of Chinese men arriving as indentured labourers, to work as shepherds and irrigation experts for private landowners and the Australian Agricultural Company . These workers seemingly all came from Fujian Province via the port then known as Amoy (now Xiamen) and some may have been brought involuntarily, as kidnapping or the' sale of pigs', as it was called, was common . Indentured labourers had been successful in other areas as an alternative to the slave trade and many ships and crews who had previous experience in the Atlantic slave trade came to transport indentured Chinese labourers and then later Chinese miners . </P>

When did the chinese first arrive in australia