Immigration by Sponsorship and The Gold Rush

The number of immigrants, whose financial situation was relatively good, increased after 1820-ies and decreased after 1830-ies. After seeing this, England changed strategy and decided to encourage the independent and wealthy people to immigrate to Australia, instead of using the island just as a prison. The employers started to pay for the ship trip for those who wanted to immigrate to Australia and then used them as cheap work force for 2 years. In this way, more than 80.000 immigrants arrived at Australia within 10-15 years. This increased the population of the white people in such a way that in the middle of 19th century, the number of the white people was double as much as the number of natives. Following this, the gold rush started and continued for 10 years and brought 600.000 new immigrants to Australia. Most of these settled down in New South Wales and Victoria. Only a small part of the people's dreams turned true and they managed to get rich, finding some gold. But during this time, many well-educated entrepreneur came to the island and made a big impact to lift up the economy. This turned Australia to be one of the richest and most important colonies of British Empire within a short time.