Kanakas were workers from various Pacific Islands employed in British colonies, such as British Columbia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Queensland in the 19th and early 20th ce
Kanaka workers on a sugar cane plantation in Queensland, late 19th century
Loyalty Islanders employed as sailors on the New Caledonian coast
South Sea Islander labourers on a Queensland pineapple plantation, 1890s; photographer unknown
Kanaka built house in Queensland in 1907
White Australia policy
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The White Australia policy was a set of racial policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origins – Asians and Pacific Islanders – from immigrating to Australia, in order to create a
Kanaka (Pacific Island worker)
…in 1901, about 10,000 were living in Queensland and northern New South Wales. The Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, legislation complementing the White Australia policy, ordained the deportation of all post-1879 arrivals to the Solomon Islands or the New Hebrides, where "neither property, nor rights, nor welcome awaited…
Camp Hill (Lambing Flat) at time of the riots, 1860–61. Now the town of Young, New South Wales
Eight-hour day march c. 1900, outside Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne
"Keep Australia White" poster used during the 1917 conscription referendum. The "No" campaign claimed that conscripted soldiers sent overseas would be replaced by non-white labour.
Dutch migrants arriving in Australia in 1954. Australia embarked upon a massive immigration programme following the Second World War and gradually dismantled the preferential treatment afforded to British migrants.