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Imagine counting the people in a town by how many blankets were handed out last winter. Anyone who never came for a blanket would not be on your list. Anyone who had already died would not be on it either. Your number would be real. It would just be a count of something else.
That, in plain terms, is how Australia ended up with its old answer to a simple question: how many people lived on the continent when the First Fleet arrived in 1788? For about a hundred years, the usual answer was somewhere around 250,000 to 300,000. A new study says the Indigenous population of Australia in 1788 was probably more than 2 million.
That is not a small correction. It is a different country.
What the new study found about the Indigenous population of Australia in 1788
The study was published in September 2026 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. It was led by Alan Williams and Corey Bradshaw, with a large team of archaeologists, geneticists, historians and modellers, including researchers from the Gujaga Foundation, an Aboriginal community organisation.
Their middle estimate, called the median, is 2.22 million people in 1788. That works out to about 0.29 people for every square kilometre of the continent. The researchers give a likely range of roughly 1 million to 4 million. So the honest way to say it is this: more than 2 million is the best estimate, and even the low end of the range is more than three times the old figure.
The big change is in how they got there. The old numbers leaned on what colonial officials wrote down. This team used three separate methods that do not rely on those headcounts at all:
- Old campfires and remains. They pulled together more than 5,000 radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites. More dated sites over time usually means more people living there.
- Genes. DNA carries a record of how large a population was over many generations. The team used it to estimate population size from the inside.
- What the land could feed. They modelled how many people, living without farming, each kind of Australian landscape could support.
Each method has its own weak spots. The researchers say so openly in their own plain-language summary of the study. But the three methods gave broadly similar answers, and that is what makes the result strong.
Where the old number came from
The low figure goes back to an anthropologist named Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. He published it around 1930. Different sources give it as about 250,000 or about 300,000. Many later estimates were built on top of it, and it shaped how most people pictured Australia’s past for the best part of a century.
Here is the part that usually gets left out. Radcliffe-Brown himself said his figure did not account for deadly disease or for frontier violence. He knew it was missing something. The number travelled for the next ninety years. The warning did not travel with it.
The problem was not that people back then could not count. It was what they were counting, and when. According to the researchers, the colonial records came from things like blanket handouts, ration depots, missions, reserves and work on sheep and cattle stations. Many people of mixed family background were left out by the rules officials used. And most of the counting happened after disease and violence had already done enormous harm.
So the old count was not mainly a count of who was there. It was a count of who was left, and of who happened to be standing where the counting was done.
What happened after 1788
This is the hard part of the study, and it should be said plainly.
The best census information before modern times comes from 1861. By then, the Indigenous population was estimated at about 177,000 to 193,000 people. If the new estimate for 1788 is right, that means roughly 93 percent of the population was gone in about 73 years. About 7 percent remained.
The team’s model puts the number of extra deaths between 1788 and 1861 at about 2.06 million. That is an average of around 28,200 deaths a year, every year, for more than seventy years. The researchers are careful to say this is a model, not a body count. Their full range runs from about 700,000 to 4.2 million deaths. They also say the model cannot split those deaths cleanly between disease, direct violence, and the slower harm of losing land, food and freedom. A related model they cite estimates that the smallpox outbreak of 1789 alone may have killed up to 220,000 people in south-eastern Australia.
Professor Larissa Behrendt, an Aboriginal legal scholar and writer, called it “a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story.”
The part of the story that is about survival
It would be easy to stop there. The researchers did not.
The Indigenous population has been growing since the 1950s. At the 2021 census, it was about 37 percent of the new 1788 estimate. If current growth carries on, it could return to its 1788 size around 2047. That is a projection, not a promise, but it is a real one.
Lead author Alan Williams said the findings show the “remarkable survival, resilience and recovery” of Indigenous Australians over the past century. The university’s own write-up put it more simply: “Amid all the death, this story is primarily one of survival.”
That matters for how you hold the number. A low count made a whole people look smaller than they were, and so it made the loss look smaller too. A truer count does the opposite on both sides. The loss gets bigger. So does the fact that they are still here.
We have written before about a 12-year-old who built a robot to save his dying language. It is the same kind of story from a different continent. What survives is not a statistic. It is people, and what they carry.
Why a number can erase people
Most of us never think about who is not in a count. A survey says “most people feel this way.” A report says “the average family.” A school counts who turned up. Whoever was not in the room is not in the number, and after a while it is easy to forget they were ever outside it.
That is what happened here, at the scale of a continent. Close to two million people, by the middle estimate, were not wrongly counted. They were simply never counted. The records were too late to see them.
There is a very old idea that answers this. It says no person is ever uncounted to God. Every name is known, every life is noticed, every death is seen, even when nobody wrote it down. And the lives that history forgot were never forgotten where it matters most. It is the kind of idea that only means something when the records have failed. Here, they did.
A good place to start:
The Beginner’s Guide to Feeling God’s Presence Every Day
A simple guide to noticing that you are known and seen, in the ordinary moments of a real day.
Get the free guide
Free.
What a better count asks of the rest of us
Corey Bradshaw said work like this is “essential to truth-telling.” That is a good phrase for it. A truer number does not change what happened. It changes what we are able to see.
And it is worth carrying that into ordinary life. When you hear a number about people, ask who could not have been counted. When you remember your own family’s story, ask whose names are missing from it. Many cultures keep a day for remembering the dead by name for exactly this reason: a name said out loud is a person put back in the count.
More than two million people lived in Australia in 1788. Most of them never made it onto any list. They were there anyway. And their families are still here.
Discussion question
A number made in the 1930s shaped how people saw Australia’s past for almost a century. Can you think of another famous number that might be counting the wrong thing? Tell us in the comments.
Share this
- For 90 years the standard number was about 300,000 people in Australia in 1788. New research says more than 2 million. The old count only saw who was left. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/social-issues-and-justice/indigenous-population-of-australia-in-1788/
- The man who made the old estimate said himself that it missed disease and violence. The number lasted 90 years. The warning didn’t. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/social-issues-and-justice/indigenous-population-of-australia-in-1788/
- A hard read about a catastrophe, but the researchers end on survival, and so does this. Worth your five minutes. https://bgodinspired.com/index.php/social-issues-and-justice/indigenous-population-of-australia-in-1788/
Questions and answers
What was the Indigenous population of Australia in 1788?
A study published in Nature Human Behaviour in September 2026 estimates the Indigenous population of Australia in 1788 at a median of 2.22 million people, with a likely range of about 1 million to 4 million. That is about 0.29 people per square kilometre. The estimate comes from radiocarbon dates, genetic data and models of what the land could support, not from colonial headcounts.
Why was the old estimate of Australia’s Aboriginal population so low?
The long-standing estimate of about 250,000 to 300,000 people goes back to anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown around 1930. It relied on colonial-era records, such as blanket handouts, ration depots and missions, that were made after disease and violence had already caused huge loss of life. Radcliffe-Brown himself acknowledged that his figure did not account for lethal disease or frontier violence.
How many Indigenous Australians died after colonisation?
The 2026 Nature Human Behaviour study models about 2.06 million excess deaths among Indigenous Australians between 1788 and 1861, an average of around 28,200 a year, with a full range of roughly 700,000 to 4.2 million. By 1861, about 7 percent of the estimated 1788 population remained. The researchers say the model cannot reliably separate deaths from disease, direct violence and structural violence.
How did scientists estimate Australia’s population before 1788?
Researchers used three independent methods: more than 5,000 radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites to track population change over time, genetic data to estimate effective population size, and models of how many non-farming people each Australian environment could support. The three methods have different assumptions but gave broadly similar results.
Is the Indigenous population of Australia growing today?
Yes. The Indigenous population of Australia has been growing since the 1950s. At the 2021 census it was about 37 percent of the median 1788 estimate from the 2026 study. If current growth trends continue, the researchers project it could return to its 1788 size around 2047.
