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There were few Highland emigrants to Australia before 1830, with Canada being a much preferred destination: the lower cost being a major reason both for those paying their own passage and for those landlords clearing their tenantry. The rise in Lowland emigration to Australia at the start of the 1920s did produce a relative surge in the Highlands but, to keep this in perspective, between 1815 and 1830, there were only 59 Highland applications, although this does not allow for the farm workers and domestic servants they took with them (these being relatively prosperous emigrants) or the many unnamed Highlanders who went to Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s. It was the growth of emigration societies in the 1830s, and subsidised passages, which made Australia an attractive destination. and, by 1837, the number of emigrants leaving Scottish ports for Australia surpassed the number going to North America.
Although New South Wales was the main area for Highland settlement at the end of the 1830s,
Victoria was overwhelmingly the major Australian destination for Highland emigrants in the 1850s. M D Prentis reckons that 80 per cent of Scottish assisted immigrants in the 1850s settled in Victoria drawn as much by connections of kin as the possibility of striking it rich with gold. Some earlier Highland emigrants had made their way over the Blue Mountains from New South Wales to Victoria and others had crossed the Bass Straits from Van Diemen's Land, in Ian Donnachie's words (The Making of 'Scots on the Make' in Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society ed T M Devine, 1992,
'attracted by apparently empty lands, the possibilities of creating a new society free of the taint of the convict system and the opportunities presented by opening up a district relatively far removed from the authorities in distant New South Wales'.
Kinship as an incentive to emigration was encouraged by the formation of the Family Colonization Loan Scheme in Port Phillip (Melbourne, Victoria) in 1851 whereby
'Persons, therefore, in Port Phillip, who wish to get out to this country, from England, Ireland or Scotland, their sons or daughters, fathers or mothers, brothers or sisters, or other near relatives; or husbands who have been necessitated to leave their wives and children behind, and may be now anxious to get them out, are informed that they and their relatives at home will be aided and advised by this society in their mutual exertions to be re-united.'
Melbourne was from its earliest days subject to a strong Scottish influence with much of its business and the surrounding agricultural land controlled by Scots, 'often ruthless squatters and land-grabbers' (Donnachie). David S MacMillan (Scotland and Australia 1788-1850: Emigration, Commerce and Investment, Oxford, 1967) has shown how much of the capital to fund this growth came, and was controlled from, Scotland. Interesting though the tales of famous men are, it should not be forgotten that the stories of most of the Highland emigrants to Victoria are ones of toil and struggle.
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