Sikhism in Australia

Australian Sikhs number over 210,000 people and account for 0.8% of Australia's population as of 2021, forming the country's fastest-growing and fifth-largest religious group. The largest Sikh populations in Australia are found in Victoria, followed by New South Wales and Queensland.

History

Pre-Federation: 1830s–1901

Early migrants: indentured labourers and cameleers

It is difficult to separate the history of early Sikh arrival to Australia from that of the numerous other religious faiths that were represented the people of British India and more specifically the Punjab province. It appears that the first Sikhs arrived in the country somewhere in the late 1830s, when the penal transport of convicts to New South Wales (which at the time also consisted of Queensland and Victoria) was slowing, before being abolished altogether in 1840. The lack of manual labourers from the convict assignment system led to an increase demand for foreign labour, which was partly filled by the arrival of Sikhs. The Sikhs came from an agrarian background in India, and thus fulfilled their tasks as farm labourers on cane fields and shepherds on sheep stations well.

A record from 1836 records a man with the surname of McCoy recruiting 50 Sikh workers for his sugar plantation in Australia, with the group stopping in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) en-route to their destination.

"Initially, the migrants from India were indentured labourers, who worked on sheep stations and farms around Australia. Some adventurers followed during the gold rush of the 1850s. A census from 1861 indicates that there were around 200 Indians in Victoria of whom 20 were in Ballarat, the town which was at the epicenter of the gold rush.