It was the largest fundraising campaign to ever take place in Australian history, according to the university, and the biggest public campaign to be undertaken by a university in the Asia Pacific.

Beyond Australia, significant donors came from the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

Major gifts included $26m from Michael Buxton, including his collection of contemporary Australian art and funding for a new museum at Southbank, and $10m from alumnus Peter Wade for the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship.

Pamela Galli and the Lorenzo and Pamela Galli Foundation for Professorships contributed $10m to advance cancer research and explore child developmental medicine.

More than 20,000 donors collectively gave to reach this target and nearly 5,000 of these donors were under the age of 30.

Vice-chancellor Glyn Davis announced the university is to launch a second phase of the campaign with the aim of raising $1bn by 2021.

He said, “We’ve been able to provide more than $150m to educate tomorrow’s leaders, $120m towards enriching our communities, on top of the more than $230m raised for groundbreaking research in areas including, melanoma and skin cancers, childhood mental health and human rights law.”

Beyond Australia, significant donors came from the US, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the UK

“Our work remains unfinished,” said Davis. “Our aspiration is to engage 100,000 of our alumni by the end of the campaign in 2021 as active participants in the life of the university.”

The University of Melbourne and the University of Birmingham have also recently announced a new collaboration. The collaboration will be a PhD programme allowing 20 Priestly Scholars in engineering the chance to study with academics in both Birmingham and Melbourne.

The universities will be collaborating on research, education and cultural engagement. The £2m ‘Priestley PhD Fellowship’ reflects a 20-year relationship between the two institutions.