Potential Australian Population

[BELFAST]

Australia today is the third least densely populated country in the world with a population of just under 25 million despite its massive size and the fact that it has the 6th most Arable land in the world. This is in large part because of its status as not only a recent settler colonial state, but also its lesser focus as a destination for settlers with the US being a much better option. If Australia saw greater focus as a colony, or if it was instead dominated by a native-grown civilization, what could you see the population reaching to? How could this population be achieved?

Australia after ww2 had the highest per cent of immigrants in the world outside of Isreal.
A lot of the arable land and water is in the very hot part of the county that was not popular with settlers.
FYI.
The Australian Population Research Institute, Background paper, November 2015

https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/migration-to-australia-finalv2.pdf

 

[Dominic]

There is absolutely no need for an agricultural/water POD for modern Australian population growth. There's enormous slack in the system. The question is probably going to be centred around migration, though perhaps if you swing it in the early 19th century birth rates could play a role. No amount of extra farming will have any impact on demographics here whatsoever.

 

[BigSteve]

There is absolutely no need for an agricultural/water POD for modern Australian population growth. There's enormous slack in the system. The question is probably going to be centred around migration, though perhaps if you swing it in the early 19th century birth rates could play a role. No amount of extra farming will have any impact on demographics here whatsoever.

Maybe not directly, but an increase in usable farmland will have the effect of dispersing the population across the country rather than concentrating it in a handful cities. This is especially relevant from ~1850-1930, after Australia became productive but before cars became ubiquitous and people were more constrained by distance.

 

[Dominic]

Maybe not directly, but an increase in usable farmland will have the effect of dispersing the population across the country rather than concentrating it in a handful cities. This is especially relevant from ~1850-1930, after Australia became productive but before cars became ubiquitous and people were more constrained by distance.

That would have a wide range of effects, but unless it attracts immigrants it won't have any impact on population size. Given the overwhelming popularity of Melbourne and Sydney compared to the rest of Australia - both recently and across the last 150 years - I dare say spreading the population out would not help in that regard, for all that it might accrue different advantages.

 

[BigSteve]

That would have a wide range of effects, but unless it attracts immigrants it won't have any impact on population size. Given the overwhelming popularity of Melbourne and Sydney compared to the rest of Australia - both recently and across the last 150 years - I dare say spreading the population out would not help in that regard, for all that it might accrue different advantages.

I heavily disagree, Melbourne and Sydney in particular are only so la r ge because it was so easy to "make it" there compared to the wider countryside. There were so many attempts to incentivise people to move out there which got attention, the latest IIRC was WW1 vets, but the poor conditions and variability of supply ultimately crushed many of the would be settlers and wasted a lot of money.
In a scenario with greater water security, much of this capital isn't wasted and the OTL destitute suddenly have the means to support a family and then expand development in whichever region they've settled. Look at all the FIFO workers out there OTL, a lot of the country is profitable but there's no reason to stay in the country. Earlier agricultural/pastoral settlement forms the nucleus on which most of our eastern inland belt towns were formed in the first place after all.

 

[Dominic]

I heavily disagree, Melbourne and Sydney in particular are only so la r ge because it was so easy to "make it" there compared to the wider countryside. There were so many attempts to incentivise people to move out there which got attention, the latest IIRC was WW1 vets, but the poor conditions and variability of supply ultimately crushed many of the would be settlers and wasted a lot of money.
In a scenario with greater water security, much of this capital isn't wasted and the OTL destitute suddenly have the means to support a family and then expand development in whichever region they've settled. Look at all the FIFO workers out there OTL, a lot of the country is profitable but there's no reason to stay in the country. Earlier agricultural/pastoral settlement forms the nucleus on which most of our eastern inland belt towns were formed in the first place after all.

I don’t think it would have ever worked out like this. Agriculture in Australia has always favoured large and competitive businesses, which the vast majority of ordinary people, including returned soldiers, lacked the necessary skills for, let alone capital. Moreover, the Australian economy has always been a principally service based economy, with the only other sector to temporarily offer a large number of good jobs was manufacturing. Agriculture is an elite game, and has never in Australian history provided a strong incentive for migration.

Regarding FIFO, I think there are some all too common misunderstandings about this. While it is true that it would benefit regional towns for people to stay in them, this was never going to be easy. Fundamentally, without FIFO the mining Industry in Australia will be much smaller, as not that many people are willing to move to regional towns, even big ones, if it has to be permanent. To provide an anecdotal piece of evidence, I lived in Kalgoorlie for two years. This town works harder than most to keep workers there, and part of how it does this is to deliberately structure a range of jobs such as truck driving around 9-5 work cycles, no FIFO possible for those roles. This does certainly dampen the damage and is a wise policy, but this large town of 30 000 is unable to grow and is often actually shrinking outside of boom time. Why? People don’t want to live away from the opportunities of the big city. They actually earn less money there, but there is more to do, more family, and often better weather.

Regional Australia is at a massive disadvantage. 20th and 21st century culture simply places a massive value on the culture and possibilities of the cities, and even though mining (unlike agriculture) does attract a modest stream of skilled migrants, they mostly still end up in a state capital. The feedback forces created by population mass also contribute; people return because their family are there, which in turn perpetuates more families being from there. Without a very early POD, the large urban centric pattern of settlement is probably inevitable, IMO.

 

[Riain]

Regional Australia is at a massive disadvantage. 20th and 21st century culture simply places a massive value on the culture and possibilities of the cities, and even though mining (unlike agriculture) does attract a modest stream of skilled migrants, they mostly still end up in a state capital.

I agree, I think the answer is to have more cities the size of Geelong or Wollongong where smaller regional cities are now, to get a Capital-regional balance like Qld rather than Vic and NSW.

 

[Dominic]

I agree, I think the answer is to have more cities the size of Geelong or Wollongong where smaller regional cities are now, to get a Capital-regional balance like Qld rather than Vic and NSW.

I don't see how it would be more effective in attracting migration than the two big cities are. Melbourne and Sydney utterly dominate even Brisbane and Perth in the pop growth game, the gap is huge. To the extent that even Australia's 'fastest growing city', Geelong, attracts migration it is as a result of its proximity to Melbourne. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of working to disperse population and of good dormitory cities like the big three regionals here in Vic, but in the narrow terms of discussion as to how to get more migrants here it just is not feasible to use dispersing growth as a tool to achieve more growth - for all that there are plenty of other benefits. The more further flung regional centres, such as say Albury-Wodonga or Port Macquarie, are too distant from the state capitals to piggy back on their growth.

 

[Dominic]

In terms of population growth today, that is actually extremely easy if you want it. Open the borders, take a couple hundred thousand refugees a year, and invest billions in infrastructure. I don't mean this as anything more than a mechanical suggestion, there are plenty of objections one could make to it, but there is no need to attract more migrants, there's tens of millions who would come today if we let them. Dispersal policies are 100% about the people already here, including recent migrants, and nothing to do with the overall Australian growth rate.

 

[BigSteve]

In terms of population growth today, that is actually extremely easy if you want it. Open the borders, take a couple hundred thousand refugees a year, and invest billions in infrastructure. I don't mean this as anything more than a mechanical suggestion, there are plenty of objections one could make to it, but there is no need to attract more migrants, there's tens of millions who would come today if we let them. Dispersal policies are 100% about the people already here, including recent migrants, and nothing to do with the overall Australian growth rate.

The point is that if you have an early enough successful population dispersal, before mass transit and mass communication, you can create more urban centres and indeed more types of urban centres. Which means in the era of mass migration after ww2, Australia is more attractive a prospect and we'd get a larger percentage of all migrants both refugee and economic opportunists who otherwise went to places like the US.

 

[Dominic]

The point is that if you have an early enough successful population dispersal, before mass transit and mass communication, you can create more urban centres and indeed more types of urban centres. Which means in the era of mass migration after ww2, Australia is more attractive a prospect and we'd get a larger percentage of all migrants both refugee and economic opportunists who otherwise went to places like the US.

But why then have the vast majority of our secondary urban centres failed so thoroughly to attract migrants compared to Melbourne and Sydney? Perth and SE Queensland have done ok, at times, as has Canberra for very specific reasons. All of the others have fallen dramatically short, and I don't think increasing their numbers or size will have a large impact on this. Look at Adelaide and Hobart, languishing with low growth for most of a century. Now, if you posit a POD that saw a third major city develop in Australia, with SE Queensland being the obvious candidate, that could absolutely have a major impact on population growth.

The real issue with population growth in Australia has always been political. Look at the absurdly restrictive pre-WW1 WAP. Australia could have easily attracted several hundred thousand Slavic migrants during the 1900's and particularly early 1910's if we'd just altered the law. The interbellum would likely be low growth no matter what, but post-WW2 an early end to the WAP would have seen our population well over 30 million today, IMO. If you want to take a 19th century POD, no WAP at all would be massively helpful, Australia could have easily hosted half a million or more people of Chinese descent by 1900 if it had been sufficiently welcoming, and I reckon a large number of people from the Pacific and other areas of the British Empire would have been willing to come then. We were prejudiced even against urban British people in the early 1900's, fetishising a basically non-existent class of British farmers who we hoped would want to move to Australia.

To be sure, there are other ways to boost growth. Possibly the most dramatic would be to somehow engineer an early Gold Rush, though this isn't straightforward. An extra generation of high growth resulting from that could have major impacts down the line, in particular in terms of local industrial growth being able to outpace foreign imports by remaining ahead of the transportation cost curve. More natural growth at high levels could be enjoyed there too. Higher and more varied patterns of settlement absolutely could have resulted in a larger range of big towns and cities, in particular in Queensland and tropical Australia, but I think that would be an effect not a cause of greater growth. I would go so far as to say that it is basically impossible to even have significantly more big towns and cities without a different factor leading to greater growth, which absolutely will not be based in agriculture which is largely opposed to growth.

 

[Gloss]

Within a post 1350 CE context, just having more colonizing powers, better early modern European demographics(at home and abroad) and more successful earlier attempts and a socio-political situation that favours oversea settler colonialism then Australia could easily have been colonized a century before.

 

[BELFAST]

Where most people live in OZ. Mostly in the cooler parts.

 

[BigSteve]

But why then have the vast majority of our secondary urban centres failed so thoroughly to attract migrants compared to Melbourne and Sydney? Perth and SE Queensland have done ok, at times, as has Canberra for very specific reasons. All of the others have fallen dramatically short, and I don't think increasing their numbers or size will have a large impact on this. Look at Adelaide and Hobart, languishing with low growth for most of a century. Now, if you posit a POD that saw a third major city develop in Australia, with SE Queensland being the obvious candidate, that could absolutely have a major impact on population growth.

The real issue with population growth in Australia has always been political. Look at the absurdly restrictive pre-WW1 WAP. Australia could have easily attracted several hundred thousand Slavic migrants during the 1900's and particularly early 1910's if we'd just altered the law. The interbellum would likely be low growth no matter what, but post-WW2 an early end to the WAP would have seen our population well over 30 million today, IMO. If you want to take a 19th century POD, no WAP at all would be massively helpful, Australia could have easily hosted half a million or more people of Chinese descent by 1900 if it had been sufficiently welcoming, and I reckon a large number of people from the Pacific and other areas of the British Empire would have been willing to come then. We were prejudiced even against urban British people in the early 1900's, fetishising a basically non-existent class of British farmers who we hoped would want to move to Australia.

To be sure, there are other ways to boost growth. Possibly the most dramatic would be to somehow engineer an early Gold Rush, though this isn't straightforward. An extra generation of high growth resulting from that could have major impacts down the line, in particular in terms of local industrial growth being able to outpace foreign imports by remaining ahead of the transportation cost curve. More natural growth at high levels could be enjoyed there too. Higher and more varied patterns of settlement absolutely could have resulted in a larger range of big towns and cities, in particular in Queensland and tropical Australia, but I think that would be an effect not a cause of greater growth. I would go so far as to say that it is basically impossible to even have significantly more big towns and cities without a different factor leading to greater growth, which absolutely will not be based in agriculture which is largely opposed to growth.

It seems our argument is rather "chicken or egg" isn't it. Of course an early workaround would be a Britain more dedicated to convict transportation, OTL it was definitely mismanaged around lesser departments and outsourced to corrupt shipping magnates. This would get more people here without relying on personal and financial incentives inevitably drawing them back to the coastal cities. About 20% of the country draws descent from convicts today, and they were a relatively small base population of 160,000 in less than a century. If you even double those figures we'd achieve a population above 30 Million and have the added benefit of being able to localise them at your leisure. I understand that the transportation was ended due to the distate of free settlers, but when did the British Empire give a fuck what the colonies thought?

 

[Mitchell Hundred]

Where most people live in OZ. Mostly in the cooler parts.

My question is could this western coastal area here north from Perth approximate the population density on the eastern half of the continent?

I know the continent interior is very harsh but I've never fully understood why the west coast aside from Perth is so sparse and could it support more Perth sized cities?

 

[Riain]

Given this is pre 1900 I assume the regional towns would gain sufficient critical mass like Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo did from the gold rush in the 1700s because there's likely no saving them in the 1900s.

I'm in SW Vic atm and its noticeable that small towns and even cities like Hamilton were bigger and healthier in the recent past but have stagnated or even shrunk. In contrast Warrnambool has doubled in size, and I know lot of people from surrounding towns do move in to Warrnambool.

 

[Riain]

My question is could this western coastal area here north from Perth approximate the population density on the eastern half of the continent?

View attachment 584347

I know the continent interior is very harsh but I've never fully understood why the west coast aside from Perth is so sparse and could it support more Perth sized cities?

It's the ocean currents, the cold southerly current heading north means WA is as dry as a bone, the desert virtually comes right to the sea.

In contrast the Pacific current flows from north to south which causes a lot of rain on that coast.

 

[Dominic]

It seems our argument is rather "chicken or egg" isn't it. Of course an early workaround would be a Britain more dedicated to convict transportation, OTL it was definitely mismanaged around lesser departments and outsourced to corrupt shipping magnates. This would get more people here without relying on personal and financial incentives inevitably drawing them back to the coastal cities. About 20% of the country draws descent from convicts today, and they were a relatively small base population of 160,000 in less than a century. If you even double those figures we'd achieve a population above 30 Million and have the added benefit of being able to localise them at your leisure. I understand that the transportation was ended due to the distate of free settlers, but when did the British Empire give a fuck what the colonies thought?

I've wondered about increased convict transportation before. I think that in practice there's a soft cap. While Britain could send more, the sooner there's a large enough number for a proper economy to develop there will in that economy be individuals with power and influence that really do not like the convict association. The British Empire evidently cared a fair bit, as the colonies OTL were able to stop transportation when it suited them, more or less. On its own, I don't think more convicts will have a huge impact. Perhaps a more radical departure from OTL would be plausible - for example, a Fijian style forced migration program would be very interesting. Hard to imagine a pre-1850 avenue for this though, given the transportation costs of plausible export goods that require lots of labour.

Population growth in Australia probably needs to be driven by free settlement, and the sooner this becomes self-sustaining the better. The longer it keeps at a high rate the better as well. It is very notable that the 1890's depression totally removed Australian access to the extraordinary migration rates of the 1890-1910 period, scooping up a tiny bit in 1910-1914. Avoiding the depression, or rather reducing its length, would help greatly as well.

I would suggest that if one were to right a TL with 'maximum Australian population' in mind, and didn't want to 'cheat' through screwing over large parts of the rest of the world, a range of plausible 19th C developments could include:

Successful 1803 Port Phillip settlement: Not a huge change initially but IMO could have a much larger economic impact by the 1830's and 40's given the opportunities of Victoria versus Tasmania for economic development/land ownership attracting more people during the initial population boom pre-gold rush.

Early South Australian Experiment: AFAIK there is no particular reason why the South Australian idea could not have occurred a decade or so earlier than OTL. Not a massive impact on its own, but potentially helpful in the long run.

Early Gold Rush: This one is massive, but really hard to engineer. Gold was found many times historically, but didn't kick off a rush till after California. The US did have gold rushes prior to this one, like Georgia, perhaps that could somehow lead to an early cultural shift in Aus? Or to go a more extreme route, I don't think it'd be too difficult for the Mexican-American War to break out in the late 1830's or so, with a similar result and say an 1840 California Gold Rush being followed in 1841 by the rushes in Vic/NSW. An extra 10 years of growth could make a huge impact, easily seeing a population of 2.5 million by 1870.

Early WA Gold Rush: This one is actually really easy from an AH point of view. Gold in Coolgardie/Kalgoorlie was basically waiting to be found by luck, there's no reason it could not be found in the 1860's or 70's. Combining this with the previous POD makes it even easier. This will have huge implications for WA, basically creating another state capable of attracting migrants for non-gold reasons by the 1880's. WA's population could easily be 1-2 million bigger today with this POD.

Early/lessened Depression: This one was massively exacerbated by the influx of British money in the 1880's, turning a natural downturn into the most severe in our history. Had the banks blown themselves up in the 1870's instead, again perhaps at the tale end of a gold rush that started a decade earlier, and prior to international finance becoming quite as saturated as it would by the 1880's, it is plausible IMO that the depression would be mostly over by the early 1890's. This coincides with the 1890's migration boom, and is before the formal WAP. Still no non-Whites will be coming in in huge numbers, but perhaps if industry is also a little stronger a very large number of Eastern Europeans could come.

None of these are mutually exclusive, IMO, and could add up to a population of around 6-8 million in 1900, and 8-10 million in 1910. So basically a bit over double OTL, more or less. Such an early POD makes the 20th century pretty much impossible to guess, but could go in many directions.

My question is could this western coastal area here north from Perth approximate the population density on the eastern half of the continent?

I know the continent interior is very harsh but I've never fully understood why the west coast aside from Perth is so sparse and could it support more Perth sized cities?

There are two reasons why WA's population is a tenth of Eastern Australia's.

The primary is that while the South West corner is perfectly hospitable to Europeans, north of about Geraldton is very unpopular. There's no Queensland equivalent. Despite certain Westralian stereotypes, Eastern Australia is actually a much larger and richer piece of real estate, going a lot further north and south. The secondary reason is that population growth there basically began in the 1890's due to a late gold rush, which if earlier could indeed have seen a larger population out west.

Given this is pre 1900 I assume the regional towns would gain sufficient critical mass like Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo did from the gold rush in the 1700s because there's likely no saving them in the 1900s.

Oh I don't know, if you want to go for a more exotic POD like a Cuban Missile War we could easily see mid 20th century regional Australia be inundated with millions of British refugees in need of a home!

'Exotic' PODS are those which IMO are basically non-Australian but which could have a major impact on Australia's population. A good one could be a Trent War which sees the US blockaded for several years, re-directing several hundred thousand migrants to Gold Rush Australia at a crucial moment in population growth. This could be followed by a much dampened enthusiasm for US migration in the 1860's and 70's, seeing a more permanent shift to Australia and other centres like NZ, SA, and Argentina. Spice it up further with a second war in the 1880's that sees the US win the rematch and a million or so Canadian/Confederate citizens look for somewhere new to live, with space and jobs... down under. Or maybe have the British lose WW1. Kinda cheating though IMO.

 

[Mitchell Hundred]

If Australia was settled by the Chinese beginning in the 15th century could it potentially have a massive population today? Taiwan was settled by the Han Chinese mainly in the late 17th century and is a much smaller island and its population is not far off from Australia's today.

 

[Dominic]

If Australia was settled by the Chinese beginning in the 15th century could it potentially have a massive population today? Taiwan was settled by the Han Chinese mainly in the late 17th century and is a much smaller island and its population is not far off from Australia's today.

If you go back that far the discussion will have to be on carrying capacity. We don't know what the maximum plausible population of Australia at any point in history with any level of technology is, but certainly a 15th century settlement by a group with as much migration potential as the Chinese is going to be capable of pushing limits we never have or will. Australia is an incredibly rich territory, but I would doubt the likelihood of population on the continent reaching anything like the densities of even North America. It is, ultimately, a dry continent, for all that the impact of the dryness in practice is overstated in reference to OTL Australia.