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Every aspect of contemporary Australian life has been influenced by the influx of immigrants over the past fifty-odd years. The first wave came from Europe: Britons who had seen their homes demolished during the Blitz and the Continent's displaced people and refugees who desperately wanted an opportunity to build a new future. Change came, albeit in very small ways. Immigrants established restaurants that allowed them to enjoy foods from their homelands. For a few years, they had these to themselves, but in the late 1960s students would hunt out Balkan or Greek restaurants, which were not only exotic, but cheap. As ethnic communities gathered in different suburbs, the character of neighborhoods began to change.

Walking through Cabramatta in Sydney is like visiting an Asian city, while Johnston Street in Melbourne, with its tapas bars, is a little piece of Spain. In a number of capitals, Chinatown is a major tourist attraction, with restaurants that employ the best chefs from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Whereas once Australians might venture to the local Chinese restaurant for some chow mien, today you are more likely to find diners arguing the relative merits of Cantonese regional cooking and the more spicy Sichuan cuisine.

The stamp of immigration goes deeper than tile pleasures of the table. Although Australians were OPPOSITE: Introduced by early explorers, camels thrive in the Red Centre. ABOVE: Newlyweds on Hamilton Island, part of the With Sunday

CONFLICT AND RECONCILIATION at first unused to non-English speakers, the initial cultural shock gave way to liberalization and an acceptance that Australia was a multicultural society. Newcomers have widened Australian perspectives of the world just as the continent itself lies over a tectonic plate sluggishly moving a few millimeters each year towards Asia, so also are Australia's attitudes and policies looking towards the Orient. The Vietnam War brought home to Australia that it was geographically part of Asia, and Australia's involvement there provided the first local in-depth reporting of that part of the world. It was the Whitlam government of the early 1970s that turned the country's foreign policy towards its neighbors.

The slow continental drift is now being overtaken by a profound cultural shift, as Australia embraces more immigrants from South East Asia. Although they compose just five percent of the population, East Asians are the fastest growing immigrant group. Although nearly 23% of the current population was born overseas, Australia as a monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is also the Queen of Australia. A few changes have occurred. In 1984,"

Advance Australia Fair" replaced "God Save the Queen" as the national anthem, although the Union Jack still occupies a corner of the national flag. Over the last few decades, the belief that Australia should become a republic has become almost universal, although a 1999 referendum rejected the alternative, presidential model proposed by the sitting conservative government. Most political commentators believe it is only a matter of time before the Republic of Australia becomes a reality.

Australia Tourism Guide

After the gold rushes Australia went through several cedes of boom and bust, and the Depression of the 1890s saw the growth of new unions and their political arm, the Australian Labor Party, which protected worker's rights within Parliament and was the most successful social democratic party in the world, forming a government in 1908. Australian men at the turn of the last century were called "Cornstalks." The Cornstalk was typically two meters (six feet) tall, wearing corded pants, red shirt, a wide blue sash and a cabbage tree hat, high boots and a stock whip wrapped around his arm.

His character was described by a contemporary source as "slow, easy, indolent in the ordinary way, proud of his country and himself and capable of holding his own in anything in which he is interested." This popularly accepted view of Australians as country types was at odds with the trend towards urbanization - by the start of the twentieth century nearly half the population lived in the six capital cities.

 Australia's six independent colonies came together in 1901 to form the Commonwealth of Australia. On the first day of the New Year, a procession snaked its way through the streets of Sydney to the wild cheering of 150,000 celebrating onlookers. After Queen Victoria's proclamation was read in Centennial Park, a 21-gun salute announced the birth of the new nation. But despite its independent status, Australia remained loyal to the British Empire, and imperial foreign policy was slavishly followed.

The fireworks that saw Australia's true coming of age happened fourteen years later on the bloody battlefields of World War II. In the first major encounter involving Australian troops, they lost 8,000 men against a strong Turkish force on the beach at Gallipoli. This battle is remembered on Anzac Day (April 25), when veterans march through the streets of every capital city and major town.

 Australian soldiers, who in a nod to the country's gold-rush years were known as "diggers," went on to fight on the battlefields and in the trenches of France and Belgium. By the end of the war Australia had lost 59,000 men.

Along with many other countries, Australia's fortunes slumped in the 1930s. The Depression set in, scarring a generation of Australians. Many men without permanent employment took to the road to survive, finding odd jobs as sheep shearers, cattle rustlers, and laborers. Known as "swagmen," their swag being the small sack in which they kept all their worldly goods, they had a healthy disregard for authority. Their exploits were celebrated in folk songs, the most famous being Waltzing Matilda. World War II helped end the Depression. Japan conducted bombing raids on Australia's northern coastline between March, 1942 and November, 1943. With Britain fighting for its very survival and unable to help, the entry of the United States into the Pacific theater of war in 1941 was welcomed. Within weeks of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, 4,600 American troops arrived in Australia. On March 17, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur arrived to establish headquarters in Brisbane and over tile next few years hundreds of thousands of American troops passed through.

Although American GIs were criticized as being "over-sexed, over- paid and over here" - mainly because of their reputation for being free spenders and their success with local women - a lasting bond and mutual respect developed between the fighting men of Australia and the United States. In the aftermath of the war, the debate on Australia's future turned to its pitifully small population. To overcome this weakness the catch-cry was coined "populate or perish." And so the great postwar period of immigration began.