The Sinhalese Community in Australia
Arrival
Sinhalese belong to one of Sri Lanka's two major ethnic groups and Sinhala is the official language of the island nation. It's only since around 1973 that the Sinhalese have migrated to Australia in large numbers.
The Tamils, Sri Lanka's other big ethnic group, have a similar pattern of migration. However, some of the earliest references to migration of people from Sri Lanka date back to the 1870s when authorities in South Australia sought out the possibility of importing labour from the island country, which used to be known as Ceylon.
According to The Australian People, edited by James Jupp, a contingent of 500 Sri Lankan workers entered Australia in the late 19th Century to work on Queensland's plantations. The workers were met with hostility from local labourers who feared loss of work to the cheaper, imported workers.
The new arrivals did not stay long and only very few of their descendants still live in Australia. Sinhalese migration began in the 1960s but it was after the mid-1970s that large groups arrived and these tended to include Christians and Buddhists.
Settlement
Because of their proficiency in English, Sri Lankans generally have settled easily into Australia and achieved prominence in professional life. In The Australian People, S. Pinnawala writes that social interaction between the various Sri Lankan migrant groups has often been influenced by factors originating in their home country.
In the 1980s, this led to tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities which reflected ethnic unrest in Sri Lanka at the time. However, in Pinnawala's opinion, more recently a Sri Lankan identity has developed among the various religious and ethnic migrants.
This has led to many new community organisations being established to promote Sri Lankan culture and traditions. There have also been strong links formed between Sinhalese Buddhists now living in Australia and their co-religionists from Burma, Thailand and Cambodia.
Similar trends can be traced between Christian migrants from Sri Lanka who now live in Australia.
The civil war in Sri Lanka ended in May 2009, when government forces defeated rebel group of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). The country has entered into a new era, where the government is taking steps to develop economy, which has been suffering in last three decades due to the civil war.
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