The first missionary of the Church to Australia appears to have been William Barratt, who was ordained an elder in 1840 at the age of 17 in Staffordshire, England. When he left for South Australia that year, the Church was still only ten years old.
The first missionaries to be sent from the main body of the Church in the United States did not arrive until 1851 - the year of the Gold Rush.
 

John Murdock, age 59, and his companion Charles Wandell, arrived in Sydney on October 31, 1851. They found the colony in the grip of gold fever. Murdock had been one of the first men to be ordained a high priest in the Church, and had been called on two missions. Though he had baptised many wherever he went, he and his companion found Australia unreceptive. A few baptisms were held in Sydney within five weeks of their arrival - on December 3, 1851 - but "Elder" Murdock chose to seek more fruitful ground in Melbourne.

"The more plentiful the gold, the smaller the hearts of the people were..."

The following is a list of some of the humanitarian service projects funded by the Church farm, Kooba Station:

He left his companion in Sydney a few days before Christmas, but within ten days he returned, reporting that the people were in a perfect uproar. "The more plentiful the gold, the smaller the hearts of the people were," he wrote. A small branch was organised in Sydney early in 1852, with a handful of members. In September of that year a branch was organised in Melbourne, though by this time Elder Murdock had returned to the United States with failing health. A second group of missionaries, arrived in Sydney in April, 1853, and by the following month missionaries had been assigned to all the colonies. Meanwhile, Charles Wandell left for Utah with the majority of the "saints" who had opted to emigrate and join the growing Church there. This pattern - baptism followed by emigration - was one of the factors that held Church growth in Australia in check for many years.

Persecution and political problems in Utah for the fledgling Church caused uncertainty in the work, and by the end of 1858 all but only one missionary was on his way home. Only a few Saints chose not to go with them.

Missionaries returned in the latter part of the century, but local growth was slow. Then, in the mid-1950s, the Church was caught up in an unprecedented surge that has continued ever since. The surge resulted from a number of factors, including a fall-off in emigration of Australian members to Utah, much improved social acceptance of the Church, the start of an intensive chapel building program, growing numbers of local leaders, and an emphasis on missionary work.

In 1955, there were still only 3,000 Latter-day Saints in Australia, but by 1960 there were nearly 10,000, the year of the creation of the first stake (diocese) in the country. A decade later, numbers had more than tripled to 32,000 and by 1980 had soared past 50,000. At July 1988, Australian membership stood at 70,000. It has now topped 110,500.

The first temple in Australia was built in Sydney in 1984. In 2000/1 three new temples were completed in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. A fifth Australian temple was completed in Brisbane in 2003