[citation needed] A 1996 study gives the total ethnic strength of Welsh Australians as 243,400.

[4] This would make the Welsh the fifth largest Anglo-Celtic group in Australia after the English, Irish, Scottish and Cornish.

Welsh people numbered amongst these first settlers, and continued to arrive in the new colony through the British policy of penal transportation that was implemented for many criminal acts.

Nineteenth-century Welsh settlers were mostly farmers, followed later by gold diggers and coal miners.

Amongst its leaders was the Welsh-born Chartist John Basson Humffray, one of a significant group of immigrants that came over from Wales at this time.