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Australian town ‘Badagini’ named by Sinhala migrant labour in 1880s? – By K.K.S Perera   Lankans ‘CONQUER’ Bundaberg, Queensland on Nov 18, 1882 Aborigines with Sri Lankan Blood! Source:-dailymirror.lk   Earliest recorded evidence of Sri Lankan immigrants to Australia was in 1816; they were, Major William O’Dean, a Sri Lankan Malay and his Sinhalese wife Eve. Most of the early immigrants from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) were generally absorbed   into Aboriginal population. Other early references of Sri Lankan migration date back to the 1870s when the administrative system in Queensland Australia sought out the possibility of importing labour from Ceylon for work on sugar cane plantations. Ironically, during the same period, both coffee and tea plantations here relied on imported labour from South India. The first batch of Ceylonese arrived in 1870 to work in sugarcane plantations in the State, and were famously known as Cingalese, a common name ...