ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the emergence of a paradoxically secularist and multi-faith Australia which rests on the tripod of the many Christian traditions, an assertive secularism that has always been at the core of European Australian society and, thirdly, the rise over the past four decades of the non-Christian religious communities, most notably, the Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu and Sikh in the context of religious freedom and religion-state relationships. Australian census data allow us to focus on small geographic units, enabling us to conclude that nowhere in Australia is there anything closely resembling a religious ghetto even if there are zones of religious and ethnic concentration, particularly around faith-based schools and shops and restaurants catering to particular food and other cultural needs and in areas of initial immigrant and refugee settlement. While the gold rushes had brought a diversity of religious and ethnic groups-Revivalist Methodism, Buddhism and Islam as well as Chinese, Afghanis.
