Immigration history of Australia
After the loss of the United States, Britain experienced overcrowding of its prisons and sought to ease the problems by transportation of its prisoners. In 1787 the First Fleet of 11 ships and about 1350 people under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip sailed for Australia. On 26 January 1788 a landing was made at Sydney Cove. The new colony was formally proclaimed as the Colony of New South Wales on 7 February. Other transport fleets bringing further convicts as well as freemen to the colony followed. As a result of agitation by the free settlers in Sydney, transportation of convicts to Sydney ended in 1840. It continued to the colonies of Van Diemen's Land (where settlement began in 1803) and Moreton Bay (founded 1824, and later renamed Queensland) for some years longer. The small settlement of Perth, founded in 1829 on the Swan River in Western Australia by free settlers, failed to prosper and asked for convicts. In contrast, South Australia, with its capital Adelaide founded in 1836, and Victoria, with its capital Melbourne founded in 1839, was settled only by free settlers. South Australia not only received British migrants, but also a significant influx of Prussian farmers and tradesmen, initially seeking freedom from religious persecution. By the end of the penal transportation in 1868, approximately 165,000 people had entered Australia as convicts.
Charles Fremantle
The appointed lieutenant governor James Stirling arrived in Cockburn Sound on 2 June aboard the hired transport barque "Parmelia" with his family and other intending settlers, numbering 69 in all, to establish a colony at the Swan River in Western Australia. On 8 June they were joined by a military detachment of some 56 officers and men who disembarked from the consort ship HMS "Sulphur". On 17 June, a proxy proclamation was read by Stirling confirming Fremantle's earlier proclamation. The landing of those immigrants marked the beginning of the history of Western Australia as a British colony, and later as a state of federal Australia.