Sydney

Sydney. See Map. The capital (2020 pop 5,367,206) of New South Wales, Australia, and one of the major ports of the South Pacific. Its Ukrainian community, numbering approximately 10,000, is the largest in Australia. The first Ukrainian immigrants began to arrive in Sydney in 1947 under the International Refugee Organization resettlement program. By 1949 they had organized the Ukrainian Hromada of New South Wales, and in 1952 they acquired a Ukrainian Home in Redfern and in 1958 another in Lidcombe. Ukrainian life in Sydney consists of the Boian singing society (est 1951), with both a male and mixed choirs; a drama group established in 1950 by the Ukrainian Hromada and reorganized two years later into the Ukrainian Artistic Society; the Dnipro Ukrainian Folk Ballet (est 1957); and its successor, the Ukrainian Dance Ensemble (est 1967). Religious life centers around the Ukrainian Catholic parish of Saint Andrew (built in 1958) and three parishes of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church: Saint Mary’s (since 1949), Saint Athanasius’s (1950), and the Church of the Transfiguration (1953). The weekly newspaper Vil’na dumka has been published since 1949. In 1984 the Ukrainian Studies Centre at Macquarie University was established through the efforts of the Ukrainian community.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]