We are more Asian, less Christian and more openly gay.
Fifty years and 11.8 million people later, Australia has become unrecognisable from the country portrayed in the 1966 census.
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Census 2016: if Australia were 100 people
The latest census data has been collected and analysed. Here's a snapshot of Australia shown as a group of 100 people.
For the first time, the number of people ticking the box that said "No Religion" has trumped both the number of Catholics and Anglicans in Australia.
In 1966, 34 per cent of people said they were Anglican, 26 per cent said they were Catholic and 0.8 per cent said they had no religion.
Today, 30 per cent did not declare a religion, 8 per cent more than those who said they were Catholic and twice the number who claimed to be Anglicans.
Half-a-century ago we were a country of European migrants and had only just stopped paying for our groceries in pounds.
Now, for the first time since the First Fleet arrived, Australians born in Asia, particularly in China, India and the Philippines outnumber those born in Europe.
It means that at home we also speak different languages and follow different religions.
Since 1991, Hinduism has seen a 533 per cent rise, Buddhism a 200 per cent jump and Islam a 160 per cent increase.
None of those were even contemplated the year Harold Holt became prime minister and NSW clubs were still banned from serving alcohol on Sunday.
"[Other including Christian undefined]" was as close as we got, with just 89 Afghans and 818 Indonesians calling Australia home.
Now 2.5 per cent of Australians speak Mandarin and 1.4 per cent speak Arabic. Only two decades ago, the long tail of the the post-war influx meant Italian and Greek remained the two largest non-English language groups.
If it were not for the influx of Asian migrants, we would also be far older.
"Australia has developed a case of middle-aged spread," said Australian Bureau of Statistics director of census data Sue Taylor.
The maturing of the baby-boomer generation has meant that one-in-six Australians are now over 65, compared with one-in-seven in 2011 and only one-in-25 in 1911.
The median age for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is on the rise too.
Ten years ago it was 20, now it's 23.
But that is still more than 15 years below the non-indigenous population, and five years behind the median of the rest of the population half-a-century ago.
A note on the bottom of the 1961 census is telling:
"All tables exclude persons who described themselves as being more than 50 per cent Aboriginal or who described themselves as being 'Aboriginal'."
Changes have hit other institutions too.
Out of a population of 11.5 million in 1966, only 94,000 indicated they were divorced.
In the past decade, the divorce rate has barely budged but the number of single parent families has increased from 13 per cent in 1991 to 16 per cent in 2016
The make-up of the more than 6.1 million families is also changing.
The number of people declaring themselves in a same sex relationship has surged by 40 per cent since 2011 to 47,000.
Since 2006, the first time same-sex relationships were included as an option, there has been an 81 per cent rise.
Of those, female same-sex couples were more likely to have children [25 per cent] than male couples [4.5 per cent].
For the first time, the census also included an option for gender other than male or female. But only 1300 people provided a response that could be validated, a rate of five per 100,000 people regarded by the Bureau as statistically invalid.
Regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender, we own fewer homes, more of us renting and we are living alone.
In 2016, almost one household in four was a lone person household, up from one in five households in 1991.
By 1966, following former prime minister Robert Menzies' push to make it easier for the "forgotten people" to own their own homes, 71 per cent of Australians had snapped up their own property.
Today, as renters make up a third of all home occupiers, ownership has sunk to lows not seen since the post-World War II period.
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