Where the Sri Lankan community lives in Melbourne

Notting Hill has the largest Sri Lankan community: 4.1% of residents reported Sri Lankan ancestry, 7.9% were born in Sri Lanka, and 7.9% speak Sinhalese or Tamil at home. Dandenong North and Lynbrook follow. These 15 suburbs came from a field of 198 eligible Melbourne suburbs. In Melbourne suburbs of 2,000+ residents, 1.4% of people were born in Sri Lanka (2021 Census).

Suburbs are ordered by the share of residents who were born in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese and Tamil split the community between them, and Tamil is spoken by a larger Indian community as well, so country of birth is the signal that locates Sri Lankans specifically. Only suburbs with at least 2,000 residents are included, and percentile ranks are computed within Melbourne's pool, so the list reflects concentration relative to other metro suburbs.

They are different census angles on the Sri Lankan community: country of birth counts only those who migrated, ancestry is the broadest, since it includes people born here, and language at home counts the actively speaking core. They rarely match, and seeing them together tells you whether a suburb's community is long-established, newly-arrived, or somewhere in between.

They measure different things and come from different census questions. Ancestry is a multiple-response question (a person can report up to two), so it isn't a clean share of population; birthplace counts only people born overseas; and language counts only those who still speak it at home. This is descriptive demographic data, not a recommendation to seek out or avoid anywhere.

The language figure counts every Tamil speaker, including the larger Indian Tamil community, so it runs ahead of the other two signals rather than disagreeing with them.

The figures are from the 2021 Census, the most recent available until results from the August 2026 Census are released in 2027. The top 15 is recomputed whenever we refresh the census data.