East Timorese Australians
Australian citizens of East Timorese ancestry
East Timorese Australians are Australian citizens of East Timorese descent or an East Timor-born person who resides in the Commonwealth of Australia.
East Timorese people in Australia are one of the largest groups of the East Timorese diaspora. They mainly speak Tetun, Portuguese and other local languages.
Migration history
Under Portuguese rule
East Timorese immigration to Australia began with the arrival of the first migrants from the then Portuguese Timor in 1943 during World War II. This migration wave consisted of approximately 600 people who were evacuated from the island, of whom only 35 settled permanently after the war ended.
Indonesian occupation
During the Indonesian invasion of 1975, a significant number of East Timorese fled to Darwin, situated 656 km (408 mi) from Dili. The Australian government accepted 2,500 East Timorese refugees in 1975, primarily those of Portuguese descent. Fretilin was reported to have been active in Darwin during this time using high frequency (HF) radio communication to contact comrades in Dili. Darwin proved an ideal base for Fretilin to operate its informal government in exile given the city's significant East Timorese exile community who supported independence.
See also
Immigration to Australia
Asian Australians
Australia–East Timor relations
References
External links
Terri McCormack (2008). "East Timorese".
“East Timorese Australians” enters the record as australian citizens of East Timorese ancestry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what East, Timorese and Australians can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19645972. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1975 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “East Timorese Australians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.