Indonesian Australians

Indonesian Australians (Indonesian: Orang Indonesia di Australia) are Australian citizens and residents of Indonesian origin. 48,836 Australian residents declared Indonesian ancestry on the 2011 Australian Census, while 63,160 stated they were born in Indonesia.

Indonesian Australians

Orang Indonesia di Australia
Total population
87,075 (born in Indonesia, 2021)
Regions with significant populations
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide
Religion
Majority Christianity, with significant minorities of Muslim and Buddhism and small minorities of Hinduism
Related ethnic groups
Indonesians, Overseas Indonesians, Cocos Malays, Malaysian Australians

Despite the proximity of the two countries (they share a maritime border), Australia’s Indonesian diaspora community is relatively small. According to the University of Melbourne, Australia is merely the 19th most popular destination for Indonesian migrants.

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.

Pre-colonial era

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.

Colonial period migration

Beginning in the 1870s, Indonesian workers were recruited to work in colonial Australia, with almost 1,000 (primarily in Western Australia and Queensland) residing in Australia by federation. The pearl hunting industry predominantly recruited workers from Kupang, and sugar plantations recruited migrant labourers from Java to work in Queensland.

Following federation and the enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, the first in a series of laws that collectively formed the White Australia policy, most of these migrants returned to Indonesia.

1940s–1990s

Beginning in 1942, thousands of Indonesians fled the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies 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.

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. 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.

Between 1986 and 1996, the Indonesian-Australian community increased to 12,128. According to the Immigration Museum (Melbourne), many migrants were either students on temporary visas. However, other migrants came under either family reunion or skilled migration programs.

21st century

In 2010, Scotts Head, New South Wales opened the first and only English-Indonesian bilingual school in Australia. As of 2016, the Indonesian-born population of Victoria was estimated to be 17,806. As of 2016, Australia is the single most popular destination for Indonesians seeking an undergraduate education abroad.

Religion

Religion of Indonesian Australians (2021)

  Christianity (52.6%)

  Islam (19.3%)

  No religion (11.2%)

  Buddhism (10.4%)

  Others (6.5%)

Though Islam is the majority religion in Indonesia, Muslims are the minority among Indonesians in Australia. In the 2006 Australian Census, only 8,656 out of 50,975 Indonesians in Australia, or 17%, identified as Muslim.

However, in the 2011 census, that figure rose to 12,241 or 19.4%. Indonesian communities in Australia generally lack their own mosques, but instead typically attend mosques established by members of other ethnic groups. In contrast, more than half of the Indonesian population in Australia follows Christianity, split evenly between the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.

In 2016, 24.0% from Indonesian Australians population (73,217 people in 2016) identified as Catholic, 18.9% as Muslim, 10.0% as Buddhist, 9.2% as Atheist and 8.3% as Other Christian.

In 2021, 23.4% from Indonesian Australian population (87,075 people in 2021) identified as Catholic, 19.3% as Muslim, 11.2% as Atheist, 10.4% as Buddhist and 9.4% as Other Christian.

Notable people

Dougy Mandagi of The Temper Trap

Artists and entertainers

• Jamie Aditya, singer, TV host and former MTV Asia VJ (Australian father and Indonesian mother)
• Andre Ong Carlesso, Indonesian-Australian actor known for Guilty, born in Bandung, Indonesia
• Lee Lin Chin, Australian broadcast personality (born to Chinese parents in Indonesia)
• Frederika Alexis Cull, Indonesian-Australian actress, model, Rugby union athlete, Puteri Indonesia 2019 winner (Miss Universe Indonesia 2019) and Top 10 Miss Universe 2019.
• Lindy Rama-Ellis, Australian model and entrepreneur. Born to Balinese royalty father and Australian mother.
• Jessica Mauboy, Australian singer, born to an immigrant father from Kefamenanu, West Timor and an indigenous Australian mother.
• Nadya Hutagalung, Singaporean-Indonesian-Australian MTV VJ (Indonesian father and Australian mother).
• Dougy Mandagi, Australian singer, frontman of The Temper Trap.
• Alin Sumarwata, Australian actress (Iranian mother, Indonesian father) married to actor Don Hany
• Tasia and Gracia Seger, winners of series 7 of My Kitchen Rules; now owners of Makan, a restaurant on Collins Street in Melbourne
• Reynold Poernomo, "Dessert King", contestant on MasterChef Australia (series 7); younger brother of MasterChef Indonesia judge Arnold Poernomo.
• 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".
• Steve Khouw, Australian Survivor contestant

Indonesian-born badminton player Setyana Mapasa represented Australia at the 2020 Summer Olympics

Sports

• Adam Hollioake, Australia cricketer (Australian father and Indonesian mother)
• Ben Hollioake, Australian cricketer (Australian father and Indonesian mother)
• Massimo Luongo, Australian footballer with Queens Park Rangers (Italian father and Indonesian mother)
• Raul Isac, Australian Footballer (Timorese parents)
• Setyana Mapasa, Badminton player

Academics

• 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
• James Mahmud Rice, Australian sociologist (American father and Indonesian mother).

Other notable Indonesian Australians

• 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
• 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.

See also

• Australia–Indonesia relations

References

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", Memoirs of the Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, 6: 21–30, retrieved 10 March 2010
• 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)