Where our First Australian brothers and sisters live

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people now make up 2.5 percent of the Australian population, with 93,342 more people identifying as Indigenous in the 2011 Census than five years ago.

The 2011 Census records 548,370 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.


Indigenous population by state. Graphic: Jamie Brown - The Age

New South Wales has almost three times as many Indigenous people as Western Australia. It has well over three times the number in the Northern Territory. You could add the total Indigenous population of South Australia and Tasmania to WA and the NT and still not reach New South Wales's total alone.

Queensland has a comparable number to New South Wales, meaning three out of five Indigenous people in Australia live in just those two states.

Almost one third of the preliminary estimated resident Indigenous population resided in Major Cities (32%); 21% lived in Inner Regional areas; 22% in Outer Regional areas; 10% in Remote areas and 16% in Very Remote areas. For the non-Indigenous population, there was a much higher concentration in Major Cities (69%) and less than 2% in Remote and Very Remote Australia.