Well-known migrants tell Jane Rocca what they found when they first arrived on our shores - the good, the bad and the surprising.
Colin Fassnidge, 42
Chef
Came to Australia from Ireland aged 26 and was sponsored to work in a Sydney restaurant.
"I landed in Sydney just before the Olympics and the place was exploding with energy. In England, cuisine was French-driven but Sydney was embracing Japanese, Italian and
Chinese ingredients and you could mix them. In London at that time, you wouldn't do that. Sydney was a melting pot of people and techniques. That was very eye-opening for me. I couldn't believe that in the morning you'd go to work and then head for the beach. Australians always made the most of free time - that really stood out."
Tara Moss, 42 
Author
Came to Sydney from Canada aged 22, when she was working as an international model.
"I arrived in Sydney on Australia Day. I had already spent seven years travelling and living in New York, Madrid, Hamburg, Milan and London as a model. I remember going straight to Bondi Beach with my little suitcase, because it was a famous place.
I stayed in a small hotel room that night, waking to the sounds of the waves. Most of what I knew of Australia was through Hollywood, or from photographs of Uluru and Bondi Beach. I suppose I imagined kangaroos and Crocodile Dundee, as many international travellers did in the '90s. I didn't realise that I would later make Australia my home. In 2002, when I became an Australian citizen, it was one of the proudest moments of my life."
Poh Ling Yeow, 42
Chef and artist
Came to Australia from Malaysia aged nine with her family.
"I never felt I really belonged in Kuala Lumpur. I was a terrible student. I always felt I had been beamed in from somewhere else and that something was not quite right in my life. When we landed in Adelaide I felt a huge relief.
I loved everything about it right away - the street signs, the smell of eucalyptus, the birds, the sound of magpies warbling. I grew to love Vegemite, too."
Pettifleur Berenger, 51
Property developer, star of The Real Housewives of Melbourne Came to Australia from Sri Lanka at 19, joining members of her extended family.
"I used to watch the TV show The Sullivans as a teenager and dreamed of being in Australia and riding a horse.
I fell in love with the lifestyle. Everything about that show represented a new life for me. I landed at Melbourne airport at 5am wearing a polyester suit and was bombarded with a freezing cold winter. I remember the airport seemed so clean and the lawns were manicured - it was the opposite of Sri Lanka."
Piero Gesualdi, 68
Designer
Came by ship to Australia from Italy at age seven with his mother and sister to join their father, who was already working here.
"I remember pubs on every corner in North Fitzroy, where we lived. All of my Aussie mates had dads who would drink there but my father never went near pubs. It was the time of the six o'clock curfew and I would go with the Aussie kids to pick their fathers up out of the gutter because they were pissed every night. I became known as 'Peter' because nobody could pronounce my name. I wanted to become Australian and felt a bit embarrassed about my Italian culture. Everyone was eating sandwiches with hundreds and thousands, peanut butter or cheese, and I had salami in mine. I embraced the Australian way until I was 19. While studying architecture at university, I discovered the beauty of Italianism and decided my name wasn't so bad after all."
Akira Isogawa, 51
Fashion designer
Came to Australia from Japan aged 21 on a working holiday visa.
"In Sydney I instantly noticed the freedom. I was a university student and didn't feel bound to home any more. In the '80s it wasn't common for Japanese to visit Australia but the government was encouraging young Japanese to explore the world abroad. I noticed Sydney's colours: green, yellow and orange. The city didn't feel hectic and it was safe. It was the right fit for me."
Rebecca Gibney, 51
Actor
Came to Melbourne from New Zealand at 19 for a holiday and found work on a children's TV show. She intended to stay for six months but Australia became home.
"I vividly recall the smells of Asian cuisine - Vietnamese and Japanese - on Victoria Street, Richmond. Coming from Wellington, I hadn't tried many different foods. It was the smell of cultural diversity and it opened my eyes to what a melting pot Australia was and how welcome everyone was. The landscape was huge and vast.
I remember seeing Uluru and thinking, 'Wow.' I felt the indigenous spiritual energy right away."
Harry Triguboff, 83
Property developer
Came to Australia from China aged 14 with his older brother, Joseph. His parents stayed in China, later migrating to Israel.
"When my brother and I arrived at Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney, we had to find a hotel to stay in. Someone showed us a pub and explained that this was a hotel - we could get a room on top of it. I never realised this was something that could happen. It was new to us. I remember going to see the Three Sisters in Katoomba. We did have mountains in China, but the [Blue Mountains] range was very long and it impressed me.
I saw so many white people at Bondi Beach; they were all brown from the sun. I couldn't believe there were no Chinamen among them."
Aliir Aliir, 21
Sydney Swans AFL player
Came to Australia with this mother and siblings at age nine, after being born in a refugee camp in Kenya to Sudanese parents.
"I hadn't even heard of Australia before we came. I was like any other nine-year-old kid growing up: only interested in playing sport with my friends. I didn't know much about the political situation around us in Africa. We just loved being outdoors and kicking a ball. I remember arriving in Sydney and it felt massive. Learning the language was the hardest thing for me - it was difficult to communicate with other kids. I wanted to fit in as soon as I arrived and playing football was a good way to meet people."
Carla Zampatti, 73
Fashion designer
Came by ship to Fremantle from Italy aged nine with her mother and brother to join her father, who was working in the West Australian gold-mining town of Bullfinch.
"I left a valley and mountain range in northern Italy that was lush and green and arrived in the outback town of Bullfinch, which was flat with lots of red dust. I learnt what a willy-willy was: a sandstorm that rises and which you can see in the sky. As it comes towards you, you have to run or you'll be covered in red dust. I attended a school with five pupils of all ages and was the only foreign child. The contrast was total but I found it exciting and adventurous. I loved the openness of Australia and within a month I started to feel like this was home."
Mathias Cormann, 45
Finance Minister
Made his first trip to Perth from Belgium in 1994 to visit his then girlfriend, an Australian he had met while both were studying in the UK. He settled in Australia permanently in 1996.
"I remember taking my first 16-hour flight from Brussels to Singapore and then a further five-hour flight to get to Perth. It felt very long. You never really get your head around distances until you live in Australia. Growing up as a kid in Belgium, we would go on holiday to the coast, which was 200 kilometres away, and that felt like a very long trip. In Australia, 200 kilometres is like a trip from Perth to Bunbury. Now that I travel a lot, I don't think about the distances and time as much. As an Australian, you get used to it." &#183;