Chinese Australians are
Australian citizens of
Chinese ancestry. Chinese Australians are one of the largest groups of
Overseas Chinese people, and is the largest Overseas Chinese community in
Oceania. Many Chinese Australians are immigrants along with their descendants from
Mainland China,
Hong Kong,
Macau,
Taiwan, as well other countries such as
Indonesia,
Malaysia,
Singapore who have immigrated from Southeast Asia that include large populations of the Chinese diaspora. Chinese Australians are also a subgroup of East Asian Australians and represent the single largest minority in the country constituting approximately forty-percent of the
Asian Australian population. As a whole, Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry make up around four percent of Australia's population or approximately 865,000 people as of 2011. The early history of Chinese Australians had involved significant immigration from villages of the
Pearl River Delta in Southern China. Less well known are the kind of society Chinese Australians came from, the families they left behind and what their intentions were in coming. Many Chinese were lured to Australia by the
gold rush. (Since the mid-19th century, Australia was dubbed the
New Gold Mountain after the
Gold Mountain of California in North America.) They sent money to their families in the villages, and regularly visited their families and retired to the village after many years, working as a
market gardener,
shopkeeper or
cabinet maker. As with many overseas Chinese groups the world over, early Chinese immigrants to Australia established
Chinatowns in several major cities, such as Sydney (
Chinatown, Sydney),
Brisbane (
Chinatown, Brisbane) and
Melbourne (
Chinatown, Melbourne).