Cypriot Australians (; ) are Australian citizens of Cypriot descent or Cypriot born people who reside in Australia. Cypriots in Australia are the second largest Cypriot community outside of Cyprus and Greece. The cultural group is found throughout Australia, with a presence in all state capitals. According to the 2016 Australian Census, there were 28,000 people of Cypriot descent in Australia and 16,929 Cyprus-born people residing in the country at the moment of the census. As of 2014, there are over 80,000 people of Cypriot origin in Australia. Cypriot Australians have lived in Australia since the early 1850s, predominantly residing in Melbourne and Sydney. Since the beginning of the 21st century, education and employment levels of Cypriot Australian individuals have improved, becoming more similar to that of non migrant Australians. The culture and traditions of Cypriot Australians have been maintained overtime. Most Cypriot Australians are of Greek background. Many intermarry with other Greek Australians.
Immigration history
Early years: 1850s–1930s
Migration from the Eastern Mediterranean Island to Australia has been traced back to the middle of the 19th Century, at the time of the Australian Gold Rushes. The earliest Cypriot individuals who migrated to Australia settled into the mining towns of Ballarat and Daylesford in Victoria, North-west of Melbourne. During the 1850s, the population worked mostly as miners and as labourers. With the colonial period of Australia from 1788 to 1901 creating extremely strong bonds between Australia and the United Kingdom, the ceding of Cyprus to the Commonwealth by the Ottomans in 1878 promoted large influxes of Cypriot migration into Australia. During the 19th century, the majority of Cypriot Australian migrants were males who entered Australia aboard British ships as crewmen.
By the beginning of the 20th century, many migrants had upskilled and established businesses which existed mostly in Melbourne and Sydney. The Australian census of 1933 estimated that approximately 500 Cypriot born individuals lived in Australia. 8000 Cypriot born people lived in the United Kingdom before the beginning of World War 2. The small Cypriot born population of Australia existed as a result of the presence of the United Kingdom, which attracted the majority of Europe's migrants for all of the 19th century and the majority of the 20th century. The more highly developed infrastructure in the United Kingdom compared to Australia, as well as the close proximity to Cyprus were the primary factors which influenced migrant influxes to the UK as opposed to Australia prior to the second World War.
In 1930, there were no Turkish Cypriot born migrants living in Australia. The first notable influx of Turkish Cypriot migration occurred in September 1947, following the Second World War. Prior to 1940, 3 Cypriot migrants acknowledged Turkish to be their primary language, compared to almost 1000 claiming Greek as their native tongue at the same time. Migration was extremely difficult for many Turkish Cypriots as a result of the implementation of the White Australia Policy. The White Australia policy aimed to disallow any non European migration into Australia. The policies introduced was more accepting of Greek Cypriots from Europe than the Turkish Cypriot population, which had much closer relationships with the middle East than with Europe. In the late 1940s, 66 Turkish Cypriot Australians migrated to Australia, marking the beginning of Turkish Cypriot migration in Australia.
Post World War 2 mass migration: 1940s–1980s
By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Australian government began to implement a range of legislation and regimes which aimed to promote migration from Europe following the war. The success of many of these schemes caused repeated influxes of Cypriots into Australia over the remainder of the 20th century. The success of these regimes saw the first considerable wave of mass immigration to Australia, as Cypriots began migrate in larger numbers in the 1950s. By 1956, there were 350 Turkish Cypriot and 2000 Greek Cypriot born individuals living in Australia. The two and a half decades following World War 2 saw gradual increases in migrant flows from Cyprus to Australia. The greatest numbers of Cypriot migrants occurred in the middle to late 1970s, following the 1974 Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, where 6600 individuals arrived in Australia in the four years following the conflict. 16% of the Cypriot Australian population migrated after 1985, and whilst migration in Australia was once substantial, the rate has slowly declined from 1990 to 2018.