Across Australia, immigration walls and monuments recognise people who migrated to this country and contributed to its development.
The names inscribed on these memorials represent individual and family stories of departure, arrival and settlement. Some inscriptions also record the migrant’s country of origin, year of arrival and the ship on which they travelled.
Several monuments have online databases that are valuable resources for family-history research. Others can only be explored by visiting the memorial itself.
Sydney
Australia’s National Monument to Migration is located at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, overlooking Pyrmont Bay.
Its online database can be searched by name. It can also be filtered by country of origin: select Netherlands to find Dutch migrants recorded on the monument. The database currently contains more than 1,850 entries associated with the Netherlands.
Search the National Monument to Migration
Fremantle
The Welcome Walls at the WA Maritime Museum at Victoria Quay contain more than 400 panels commemorating migrants who arrived in Western Australia through Fremantle.
The online database records names and, in many cases, the year of arrival, ship and a short family story. The database is no longer being updated, but it remains a valuable research resource.
Browse the Fremantle Welcome Walls database
Gippsland
The Gippsland Immigration Wall of Recognition is located at Kernot Lake in Morwell, Victoria. It commemorates immigrant families who lived or worked in Gippsland and contributed to the region’s development.
The names are inscribed on granite walls surrounding a bronze statue of a newly arrived migrant. Dutch people were among the postwar migrants who settled in Gippsland, particularly in the Latrobe Valley.
There does not appear to be a searchable online database of the inscriptions. However, eligible families can still apply to have their family name, country of origin and date of arrival added to the wall.
