Victoria 897 South Australia 357 | New South Wales 836 Queensland 252 | |
Lithuanian Australians refers to Australian citizens of Lithuanian national background or descent. According to the 2011 Census, there were 13,594 people of Lithuanian descent in Australia and 2,639 Lithuania-born people residing in the country at the moment of the census, having a fall of 14.1 per cent compared to the 2006 Census. The largest Lithuanian Australian community is in the state of Victoria, with 897 Lithuania-born people, especially located in Melbourne.
History
Only small numbers of Lithuanians arrived in Australia before 1947.
Many Lithuanians and other Eastern Europeans fled the Red Army in 1944 and became Displaced Persons in refugee camps in Western Europe. From 1947 they were able to emigrate to countries such as Australia under the sponsorship of the International Refugee Organization. The first voyage under Arthur Calwell's Displaced Persons immigration program, that of the General Stuart Heintzelman in 1947, was specially chosen to be all from Baltic nations, all single, many blond and blue-eyed, in order to appeal to the Australian public. Of the 843 immigrants on the Heintzelman, 442 were Lithuanian.