Polish Australia

How would it be possible for there to be an Polish Australia: Either as a colony of Poland and/or Australia is majority Polish?
 
Step 1 (16th century): Poland's ruling family turns Protestant.
Step 2 (17th century): Poland and Denmark form a personal union for mutual defense against Sweden.
Step 3 (18th century): Denmark-Poland becomes a single kingdom, sends out explorers and discovers Australia.
Step 4 (19th century): In Poland, Catholics and Polish nationalists start rebelling against the increasingly Danish-dominated government. The government defeats the rebels and exiles them and their supporters to Australia by the thousands.
 
This involves a bit of suspended disbelief;

PoD: Dutch revolt drains Spanish, English, and Dutch energy, resources, and manpower...
ITTL, Courland starts an overseas trading company, utilizing the Dutch style joint-stock companies with a few Polish Nobles and German states putting their stock into the company. As OTL, they seize a few minor possessions in Africa and the Caribbean, and start an India company, setting up shop in the early 1670s.
When Polish ships begin hearing tales of a strange southern continent, and notice odd things when travelling in the waters around the East Indies, Poland-Lithuania commissions an exploration of the area, revealing the nice habitable bits of Australia. Though other states claim the area, France is still too divided by *Fronde to settle the region, England has Republican hold-out headaches to deal with, and the Netherlands is overall weaker and has a smaller population due to butterflies impacting the Huguenot Wars and Thirty Years war.
Serendipitously, Ruthenia is lost to a revolt and Russia steps in to take the area, leading to a lot of fleeing Polish nobles and peasants, some of which head for Australia.
Saxony/Prussia/Austria and Russia then begin wars eating at the Polish borders, displacing and exiling many Poles to the *Australia.
As the Motherland's power weakens, the Polish Australia breaks away, fending off invasions from it's neighbors, even gaining some territory.
Poland and Lithuania eventually end up vassalized to *German state and Russia respectively, and under the oppressive policies, many Poles leave for Polish Australia.

By the 19th Century, Poles make up the majority of Australia, enough that the other colonies often speak Polish as a second language.
Eventually, either through war, or peaceful integration, Australia is united under this Polish Exile State.

There you go. :D
 
You have one gigantic problem; virtually every major colonizer started with the massive advantage of Atlantic ports; giving them a major "leg-up." Poland is locked into the Baltic Sea, and possibly the Black Sea if it maintains the Commonwealth (which is not much less of a lock). There's a reason why countries like Sweden could only maintain token colonies at best.
 
The Poles drill a hole through the center of the Earth, coming out in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. When the entire Pacific drains down through the hole, flooding Poland, the Poles are forced to flee their country by piloting a fleet of steampunk submersibles through the hole and making landfall at the nearest landmass, which is New Zealand. From there, a Polish Australia naturally follows.
 
Have the Poles from Silesia and other Polish lands settle Australia after the Partition instead of settling in Texas.
 
A massive catastrophic plague hits the world wiping out 99..99+% of the population. In Austalia theres a handful of survivors the majority of whom are a polish family who share a very rare genetic mutation...
 
The Wikipedia article on Jacob Kettler, duke of Courland at its height, makes an interesting claim which might be relevant here:

"Some believe he also intended to colonize Australia, which had at that time been discovered and claimed by the Dutch whom he was at war with. He supposedly had the blessing of Pope Innocent X. However, the pope soon died, and the new pope was unwilling to support the plan."

The article provides no source, however, so this claim seems dubious to me. (Why would the Dutch care about Kettler receiving Papal support anyway?) However, Jacob Kettler doing something like that would not be the least bit out of character for him. Perhaps if there was no Swedish-Polish War (or similar wars) in the mid-17th century, we might have seen Courland eventually setting up shop in Australia. Assuming it survives without being stolen by the Dutch or the British, it could eventually become the home of Polish settlers as well, as a surviving Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that retains Courland could very well use it as their door to the colonial world.
 
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