Indigenous Religion

At the time of European settlement, the Indigenous Australians had their own religious traditions of the Dreamtime (as Mircea Eliade put it) There is a general belief among the [indigenous] Australians that the world, man, and the various animals and plants were created by certain Supernatural beings who afterwards disappeared, either ascending to the sky or entering the earth (Eliade, 1973, p. 1). and ritual systems, with an emphasis on life transitions such as puberty and death.

Indigenous Australian traditions

Indigenous Australians have a complex oral tradition and spiritual values based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is at once the ancient time of creation and the present day reality of Dreaming. There were a great many different groups, each with their own individual culture, belief structure, and language.

According to the 2001 census, 5,244 persons or less than 0.03 percent of respondents reported practicing Aboriginal traditional religions. The 1996 census reported that almost 72 percent of Aborigines practiced some form of Christianity and 16 percent listed no religion. The 2001 census contained no comparable updated data.

People With No Religion

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, in 2001, 15.5% of the Australian population identified themselves as having "No Religion" in a census question. This was 1.5% lower than the 1996 result but increased to 18.8% in the census in 2006.

As of 2006, there are 3,706,555 people in Australia with purely secular beliefs, categorized by ABS as "No Religion". This category includes just 4 named sub-categories, namely agnosticism, atheism, Humanism and rationalism. A 5th sub-category is "No Religion, nfd" (nfd=no further definition).