Indonesian Australians

Indonesian Australians are Australian citizens and residents of Indonesian origin. In the 2011 Australian Census, 48,836 Australian residents stated their ancestry to be Indonesian and 63,160 stated they were Indonesian-born residents in Australia.

Migration history[]

The number of permanent settlers arriving in Australia from Indonesia since 1991 (monthly)

People born in Indonesia as a percentage of the population in Sydney by postal area.

As early as the 1750s, that is prior to European colonisation, seamen from eastern Indonesian ports such as Kupang and Makassar regularly visited Australia's northern coast, spending about four months per year there collecting trepang or sea cucumbers to trade with China.^[2] Although they did not settle in Australia, some took Indigenous wives and their descendants are present in many north coast populations today including the Yolngu of Arnhem Land.

By the late 19th century, the pearl hunting industry was recruiting workers from Kupang, while sugar plantations had hired migrant labourers from Java to work in Queensland; Dutch colonial authorities estimated they formed a total population of about 1,000. However, after the federation of Australia and the enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, the first part of a series of laws which collectively formed the White Australia policy, most of these migrants returned to Indonesia.^[3] Beginning in 1942, thousands of Indonesians fled the Japanese occupation of Indonesia and took refuge in Australia. Exact landing statistics were not kept due to the chaotic nature of their migration, but after the war, 3,768 repatriated to Indonesia on Australian government-provided ships.^[4] In the 1950s, roughly 10,000 people from the former Dutch colony of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), who held Dutch citizenship and previously settled in the Netherlands, migrated to Australia, bypassing the White Australia policy.^[5][6] Large numbers of Chinese Indonesians began migrating to Australia in the late 1990s, fleeing the political and economic turmoil in the aftermath of the May 1998 riots and the subsequent fall of Suharto.^[7]

Religion[]

Though Islam is the majority religion in Indonesia, Muslims are the minority among Indonesians in Australia.^[8] In the 2006 Australian Census, only 8,656 out of 50,975 Indonesians in Australia, or 17%, identified as Muslim, though five years later, in the 2011 census, that figure rose to 12,241 or 19.4%.^[1] They lack their own mosques, but instead typically attend mosques established by members of other ethnic groups.^[8] In contrast, more than half of the Indonesian population in Australia follows Christianity, split evenly between the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.^[9]

Notable people[]

Dougy Mandagi of The Temper Trap

• Oodeen (later John O'Dean), 19th century Sydney Islamic community leader, interpreter at Northern Territory's Fort Wellington (1827-1829) and New South Wales court interpreter.^[10]
• Annie O'Keefe (formerly Annie Maas Jacob), escaped from the Japanese on the Aru Islands to Australia in 1942. At the end of the Second World War, she successfully challenged the Australian Government in the High Court for her right to permanently reside in Australia bringing into question many aspects of the White Australia Policy.^[11]
• , Indonesian-Australian actor known for , born in Bandung, Indonesia.^[12]
• Lee Lin Chin, Australian broadcast personality.
• Frederika Alexis Cull, Indonesian-Australian actress, model, Rugby union athlete, Puteri Indonesia 2019 winner (Miss Universe Indonesia 2019) and Top 10 Miss Universe 2019.
• David Flint, Australian legal academic, known for his leadership of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and for his tenure as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (Australian father and Indonesian-Dutch mother).
• Ariel Heryanto, sociologist.
• Adam Hollioake, Australia cricketer (Australian father and Indonesian mother).
• Ben Hollioake, Australian cricketer (Australian father and Indonesian mother).
• Nadya Hutagalung, Singaporean-Indonesian-Australian MTV VJ (Indonesian father and Australian mother).^[13]
• Massimo Luongo, Australian footballer with Queens Park Rangers (Italian father and Indonesian mother).
• Dougy Mandagi, Australian singer, frontman of The Temper Trap.
• Jessica Mauboy, Australian singer, born to an immigrant father from Kefamenanu, West Timor and an indigenous Australian mother.^[14]
• , "Dessert King", MasterChef Australia (series 7) contestant and younger brother of MasterChef Indonesia judge Arnold Poernomo.
• James Mahmud Rice, Australian sociologist (American father and Indonesian mother).
• Demas Rusli, Indonesian born Australian photographer and designer
• Rena Sarumpaet, SBS presenter and journalist.
• , winner of My Kitchen Rules (series 7), now owner of restaurant Makan in Collins Street, Melbourne.
• , young App developer.
• Auskar Surbakti, presenter and correspondent at TRT World in Istanbul, previously with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Auskar won the 2011 Elizabeth O'Neill Journalism Award. Born to Karo Batak parents, Auskar is an abbreviation of "Australia–Karo".
• , Australian Survivor contestant
• Setyana Mapasa, Badminton player
• Alin Sumarwata, Australian actress (Iranian mother, Indonesian father) married to actor Don Hany

See also[]

• Australia–Indonesia relations

References[]

Notes[]

Sources[]

• Coté, Joost; Westerbeek, Loes (2005), Recalling the Indies: Colonial Culture and Postcolonial Identities, Askant Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-90-5260-119-9
• Ikegami, Shigehiro (2005), "A Profile of Indonesian People in Australia" (PDF), Memoirs of the Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, 6: 21–30, retrieved 10 March 2010^{[permanent dead link]}
• Lockwood, Rupert (October 1970), "The Indonesian Exiles in Australia, 1942–1947", Indonesia, 10 (10): 37–56, doi:10.2307/3350634, hdl:1813/53499, JSTOR 3350634
• Penny, Janet; Gunawan, Tuti (2001), "Indonesians", in Jupp, James (ed.), The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People, and Their Origins, Cambridge University Press, pp. 439–441
• Saeed, Abdullah (2003), "Who are Australia's Muslims?", Islam in Australia, Allen and Unwin, ISBN 1-86508-864-1
• Willems, Wim (2001), De uittocht uit Indie 1945-1995: De geschiedenis van Indische Nederlanders, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, ISBN 978-90-351-2361-8

Further reading[]

• Clark, Marshall & Sally K. May (2013), Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences. Canberra. Australian National University Press.
• Da Costa, Hilary (September 1992), "Indonesians in Australia - Profile of a little-known community", Inside Indonesia, 32, ISSN 0814-1185
• Lingard, Jan (2008). Refugees and Rebels: Indonesian Exiles in Wartime Australia. North Melbourne. Australian Scholarly Publishing.
• Martinez, Julia & Adrian Vickers (2015). The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network. University of Hawai'i Press.
• Nonini, Donald M. (2004), "Spheres of speculation and middling transnational migrants: Chinese Indonesians in the Asia-Pacific", in Yeoh, Brenda S. A.; Willis, Katie (eds.), State/Nation/Transnation: Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-30279-X
• Penny, J. (1993), Indonesians in Australia, 1947 to 1986, Working Papers, vol. 84, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, ISBN 0-7326-0513-X
• Siregar, Bahren Umar (1987), Language choice, language mixing and language attitudes: Indonesians in Australia, PhD dissertation, Monash University, OCLC 34466563

External links[]

• McCormack, Terri (2008). "Indonesians". Dictionary of Sydney. Retrieved 4 October 2015. [CC-By-SA] (Indonesians in Sydney)