Caribbean and West Indian Australians

According to the 2006 Australian census, 4,852 Australians were born in the Caribbean^[2] while 4,242 claimed the Caribbean ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry.^[1]

Connections between the West Indies and Australia began in the early days of European settlement.

Australia’s first newspaper publisher, and founder of the Sydney Gazette in 1803 was George Howe, a white convict from St Kitts.^[3] Eighteen convicts from the West Indies arrived on the convict ship the Moffatt in 1836 including William Buchanan and Richard Holt.^[4] Buchanan and James Smith, also from Jamaica, were two of 34 convicts from the West Indies known to have stayed at the Hyde Park Barracks.^[5] Billy Blue who had served in the British Army before being convicted of stealing sugar and transported to Australia was also thought to be a Jamaican.^[6]

At the height of the British Empire, officers and administrators moved freely between far-flung colonies. Many came to Australia from the West Indies, while others, like Edward Eyre,^[7] left Australia to take up appointments there. Another emigrant was barrister Robert Burnside. He was born and raised in the Bahamas, the son of the country's Solicitor-General.^[8] After qualifying in England, he set up practice in Perth, eventually becoming a Supreme Court judge.

Black convicts, servants and sailors from the West Indies also arrived in Australia and many of them later integrated into Aboriginal communities.^{[citation needed]} These relationships, and links forged through the sport of boxing, contributed to later alliances between the Black Consciousness Movements in Australia, the USA and the West Indies, including a branch of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA-ACL in Sydney in the 1920s.^{[citation needed]}

Caribbean people were also among the many nationalities flocking to the Victorian goldfields after 1851. One of the thirteen miners killed at the Eureka Stockade was a Jamaican, James Campbell. Arthur Windsor, editor of the Age newspaper from 1872 to 1900 was born in Barbados.^[9]

Especially since the abandonment of the White Australia policy, West Indians have arrived from many countries of the Commonwealth. From honky-tonk pianist Winifred Atwell to environmental engineer Ken Potter and writer Ralph de Boissière, they have brought wide-ranging skills, experience and cultural richness to Australia.