[2] As early as the 1750s, that is prior to European colonisation, seamen from eastern Indonesian ports such as Kupang and Makassar regularly visited Australia's northern coast, spending about four months per year there collecting trepang or sea cucumbers to trade with China.

Following federation and the enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, the first in a series of laws that collectively formed the White Australia policy, most of these migrants returned to Indonesia.

Exact landing statistics were not kept due to the chaotic nature of their migration, but after the war, 3,768 repatriated to Indonesia on Australian government-provided ships.

[7][8] Large numbers of Chinese Indonesians began migrating to Australia in the late 1990s, fleeing the political and economic turmoil in the aftermath of the May 1998 riots and the subsequent fall of Suharto.

[13] In contrast, more than half of the Indonesian population in Australia follows Christianity, split evenly between the Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.