The term White Australia policy comprises various historical policies that effectively barred people of non-European descent from immigrating to Australia. There was never any specific policy titled such, but the term was invented later to describe a collection of policies that were designed to exclude people from Asia (particularly China) and the Pacific Islands (particularly Melanesia). These policies had their inception in the goldfields where there was antagonism to Chinese miners who worked co-operatively and were perceived to be doing better than their white counterparts. From the 1850s there were restrictions on family members joining Chinese miners already in Australia. The colonial authorities levied a special tax on Chinese immigrants that other immigrants were exempted from. Tow