People of New South Wales

Population composition

Human remains found at Mungo indicate that Australia was inhabited about 46,000 to 50,000 years ago. Prior to European settlement, relatively dense populations of Aboriginal people lived close to the rich resources of the coast, and other groups concentrated around the major inland rivers. There are no accurate estimates of the Aboriginal population at the time of European settlement, but a figure of about 100,000 has been suggested for the area that would become New South Wales. These people lived in approximately 70 tribal or language groups.

Since European settlement the population of New South Wales has been representative of that of Australia as a whole; the successive phases of immigration have produced no major cultural or linguistic differences between the states. Nearly two-thirds of the people are of British extraction, but since 1947 there has been a major influx of immigrants, first from Britain, then from the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the Balkan region, and Turkey. In addition, since the 1980s large numbers of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants also have arrived. Although Aboriginal people and those of Torres Strait Islands origin make up only a small fraction of the state’s population, New South Wales has the highest proportion of Australia’s Aboriginal population, and their numbers in the early 21st century were increasing at a greater rate than those of other groups of Australians.

Many immigrants have prospered, and there are recognizable national and ethnic concentrations in Sydney and other larger regional centres. In the early 21st century New South Wales had one of the highest proportions among the states of residents born overseas. These people included refugees or other immigrants associated with humanitarian programs, mostly from Iraq and southern Asia.

The greatest concentration of the Aboriginal population is in the western and southwestern areas of Sydney, although the highest proportion of the Aboriginal population (roughly one-fifth) is in western New South Wales.

Overall, ethnic tension is low, although cultural strains have sometimes flared, as they did in February 2004 when rioting broke out in Redfern (one of Sydney’s inner suburbs that has a strong Aboriginal community) in response to allegations of police brutality against Aborigines. Episodes of ethnically motivated crowd violence in Cronulla (a Sydney beachside suburb) in December 2005 were focused on a community of ethnic Lebanese there. Persistent discrimination against Aborigines is also experienced in some nonurban population centres.

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By far the largest portion of the population professing a religion is Christian, although the number giving no religious preference rises at each census, and increasing numbers identify as Muslim and Buddhist. The largest active denominations are the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church of Australia. The Uniting Church, formed by congregations of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists, also has a large adherence.

Settlement patterns

More than two-thirds of the state’s population is crowded into 2 percent of its area—namely, into Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong, its three largest urban centres. Since the 1980s there has been a movement of retirees and urban dwellers seeking a simpler life to inland regions and to the coastal areas north and south of Sydney. The growth of these “peri-metropolitan” patterns of settlement has become a strong feature of contemporary New South Wales and is associated with new demographic imbalances and service needs.

Outside of these concentrations the population is sparsely distributed. There are many country service towns, although few exceed 20,000 in population. The largest inland cities are Albury, Orange, and Dubbo, which are essentially administrative centres for surrounding agricultural districts. Areas of the inland and particularly far-western portions of the state have recorded sustained population decline for several decades.

Demographic trends

The overall birth rate, death rate, and other vital statistics do not vary substantially from those of the rest of Australia. The population is aging, family size is falling, the death rate is in decline, and life expectancy is increasing. These trends became evident in the 1970s and continued into the 21st century. The aging of the population is most evident in growing coastal communities. For Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, however, the profile on all health indicators is significantly worse than for the rest of the population, and the age distribution is largely reversed.