While walking past the reception in the hostel in Darwin, I heard the receptionist tell a group of young women, ‘We don’t get many Welsh people here’. Attention grabbed, I turned and asked, ‘You don’t?’. It turned out that several of the group were from Wales, including a girl from Pwllheli – Welsh-speaking Gog (Northener), like me. The receptionist herself was from Merthyr Tudful. I was surprised, but not that surprised. Despite what the receptionist said, I know quite a few who’ve moved to Australia, mostly temporarily. Not America, not Canada, not New Zealand – all the Cymry (our endonym, that is, our own name for ourselves) that I knew who decided to leave our native island, either for a year or for good, went to Australia.
This is nothing new. Welsh immigration to Australia in the 19th century, mostly drawn by the gold mines in the state of Victoria, was common enough that a bard* wrote a guide to Australia in Welsh in 1852 for his fellow immigrants. That said, North America was a more popular destination for the Cymry until the level of immigration started to tail off in the 1930s. Immigration to Australia, too, stalled during the Second World War, but then rebounded: almost a fifth of Australia’s current Welsh-born population arrived in the 1960s. Immigration levels started to decline again until there was another surge in the 2000s. But this wasn’t just the Cymry: British-born people in general, mostly older people, now make up Australia’s largest migrant community. Those early Welsh immigrants left their mark: not only is there a Welsh Church in Melbourne, which holds services in Welsh, but there is such a long history of eisteddfodau** being held in Australia, dating back to the 19th century, that the word eisteddfod has become part of the lexicon. Australian eisteddfodau have even split off from their origin become their own thing, as the term has come to mean any music and/or dance festival, omitting the poetry which is a key part of the traditional Welsh Eisteddfod.
The 19th century immigrants would have been escaping the squalor of Victorian industrial drudgery; modern Wales does not have the same levels of poverty as it did then, but according to the Office for National Statistics, out of the nations of the UK, Wales is still the worst hit by both unemployment and child poverty. The average weekly earnings in the UK in 2025 is £766.60, while average weekly earnings in Wales is £704.30. In Gwynedd in the north-west, the Welsh-speaking heartland (and where I’m from), the figure is £665.20. Poor, rural, and post-industrial (the slate-quarrying industry collapsed decades ago), it is exactly the kind of region that haemorrhages young people in search of new pastures.
Most who leave move to England, of course, but Australian visas also offer a temporary, but sunnier and more adventurous, way out. The Working Holiday Maker visa, available to British citizens between the ages of 18 and 35, gives young people the right to live in Australia and work to support themselves for up to a year, with the possibility of two additional visas for two extra years. Permanent immigration and Australian citizenship is a much more involved affair, which would explain why most of the Cymry I know who moved to Australia did so temporarily, some of them doing seasonal work on farms, and the one who emigrated permanently was a nurse – the kind of profession I suspect immigration authorities look on kindly.
The nurse told me that, apart from the usual itchy feet of youth, she had moved for higher wages, less stress, and, of course, better weather. Similarly, a budding artist who went to Australia temporarily cited better pay, better work/life balance, escaping from the escalating cost of living in the UK, and again, better weather. It seems that everyone I’ve spoken to who are in their twenties or thirties and from west Wales know someone who went to Australia, usually multiple people, while barely anyone I know from England is familiar with the idea of seeing friends and family chase the sun to the Southern Hemisphere. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to connect this with Wales, especially the west, being much poorer than England. Neither does it take much to imagine what effect social media pictures of a sun-drenched beach near Sydney from a former school friend has on someone young, frustrated, and stuck in a cold, grey winter in west Wales with no prospects. Personally, I don’t need to imagine.
Sources: Representations of Australia in Mid-Nineteenth-century Welsh Emigrant Literature: Gwlad yr Aur and Australia A’r Cloddfeydd Aur by Bill Jones (Welsh History Review, 2007-02, Vol.23 (2), p.51-74) / Darlith Flynyddol y Coleg Cymraeg 2018: Cymru, Ymfudo a’r Cymry Tramor Rhwng y Rhyfeloedd Byd gan Bill Jones / Australian Bureau of Statistics / Government of Australia Department of Home Affairs / Melbourne Welsh Church / Australian National Eisteddfod / Office of National Statistics (UK)
*It occurs to me that the use of this term might seem strange to those who are only familiar with it from Dungeons & Dragons. In our culture, we do not have poets, we have bards (or beirdd). Same thing as a poet, more or less, but with an ancient cultural context behind it. Also bards have bardic names – the one who wrote the guide to Australia was called David William Pughe, but his bardic name was “Dafydd ap Gwilym ap Huw Feddyg” (in this case, a traditional, de-anglicised version of his name).
**A cornerstone of Welsh culture, an eisteddfod is a competitive culture festival, generally with an emphasis on the traditional Welsh arts, such as choir-singing, playing the harp, and poetry. The traditional prize for the best bard is a chair, presented by the derwyddion (druids). Eisteddfodau vary from being school-based events to the annual National Eisteddfod, which is usually held in a field somewhere in Wales every summer.
Wandering/Wondering 