I've been intending to write a TL where Majapahit essentially survives by averting Paregreg Civil War. Fast forwards some centuries into future, by the dawn of European Exploration Era, you'd have a regional power capable of fending Europeans from direct access into Spice Island, and one that will surely build up defense to counter European ambitions everywhere in their surroundings, including eventually Australia when it finally becomes relevant. It will like become relevant sooner to Indonesians here then to Europeans IOTL, though, considering factors such as proximity and precedents. After hearing news from the Bugis and about European explorers sniffing around the continent, it will surely entice Javanese interest on the continent. Perhaps, skipping away the barren Northwestern coast which is already Bugis trepanging zone, they'd look for somewhere more suitable for settlement, like Queensland. From there, Majapahit colonialism expands southward to what is now IOTL New South, Victoria and Tasmania, mainly to prevent Europeans from getting there.
The question is : how will Indonesian-colonized Australia look like ? Queensland is climatically natural for Indonesian settler colonialism, and also additional land for tropical cash crops desired by western market. The thing would be Southeastern Australia. What kind of economy and society will show up there ? Not like Indonesians will freeze once they set foot there, but it'll take time to adjust, and I'm positing a perceived pressing need to rush in before Europeans do, so how would Majapahit or whatever it will be called later, develop the area ? I have been playing with the idea of a reversed situation of usual OTL pattern where the closer a place gets to the equator, the less developed, more agricultural it becomes. So here we'll have a temperate Dixieland south of tropical yankland, so to speak(how many layers of irony was that again ?). The question being : 1) what can be the possible primadona cash crop ? ; and 2) what will be the substitute for ethno-racially different sizable population of exploited labor class ? Especially for number 2. I can see possible recruitment of Chinese for coolies and stuff, or perhaps other east Asians too, to get things more interesting. When slavery is still cool though, I'd expect importation of Maori captives from their fellow Maori captors, but I'm inclined to think there'll be rather too few of them. Perhaps they can also import Cape Africans from whoever colonizes South Africa in this universe... Of course, the main prize I'm looking for here is white European immigration.
But anyway, is the reversal scheme above realistic at all ? If not, what do you think temperate Australia will become under tropical colonialism ?