Indians in Australia: the 2026 guide to visas, Medicare, tax, rent, schools, driving, citizenship, temples and Diwali

Australia had about 27.6 million residents at 30 June 2025, 8.8 million of them born overseas, and India is now the largest overseas birthplace. The count this site quotes is the census one: about 673,000 people born in India live in Australia: 673,352 in the 2021 census, 2.6% of the 25,422,788 people the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) counted. It counts birthplace only. Australians of Indian ancestry born in Australia are not in this count, and neither are people of Indian origin born in Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore or South Africa, so the community is larger than the number: 783,953 people gave Indian as an ancestry in the same census, 200,971 of them born in Australia.

The census is five years old. The ABS’s newer figure is an estimate: 971,020 people born in India at 30 June 2025, 3.5% of the population, published on 29 April 2026 and still preliminary. It put India ahead of England (970,950) for the first time on record. The two numbers are not like for like, because a census counts people on one night and an estimate adjusts the census and rolls it forward: adding up the ABS’s state estimates for 30 June 2021 gives about 712,000 India-born residents against the census count of 673,352, so the rise to 2025 is nearer 36% than 44%. The next census was held on 11 August 2026 and its first results are due in June 2027. India’s Ministry of External Affairs gives a third figure, 845,800 overseas Indians in Australia in January 2026, made up of 719,897 persons of Indian origin and 125,903 non-resident Indians; that is the Indian government’s estimate, not an Australian count.

Two notes on reading the figures. Every price, fee and rule on this page carries its date, because Australia moves its visa charges, tax rates, minimum wage and school fees on 1 July and its rules by state, and 1 July 2026 changed most of them. And the pages that go deeper are on this site: jobs and visas, the OCI card, Indian passport renewal, temples, gurdwaras and Jain temples and the city guides for Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.

Who the census counted

The 2021 census counted 673,352 people born in India, up from 455,385 in 2016, a rise of 48% in five years. Of them 53.8% were men, the median age was 35 against 38 for all Australians, 51.4% (346,222) were already Australian citizens and 48.3% (325,332) were not. Four in five of those aged 15 and over were in the labour force (79.1%, against 61.1% of everyone), and professionals were the largest group among the employed (31.9%, against 24.0% overall). The industries that employed the most India-born people were computer system design (7.4%), hospitals (6.0%), residential aged care (4.4%), banking (3.6%) and supermarkets and grocery stores (3.4%). Median personal income was A$1,015 a week against A$805 for all Australians.

Most of the community is new. The year-of-arrival table shows how recent it is:

That is 87% since 2001. The shares are of all India-born residents; about 10,000 gave no arrival year. The community therefore has two layers: a settled one, made up of the 11% of India-born residents who arrived before 2001 and the Australian-born people who share their ancestry, and a much larger recent one of students, graduates and skilled workers on temporary or new permanent visas, with different rules for health cover, school fees and tax, which is why so much of this guide comes with the words “depends on your visa”.

Faiths and languages

By religion, 51.0% of India-born people said Hinduism (343,571), 22.1% Sikhism (148,806), 10.6% Catholicism and 4.2% Islam. Nationally the census counted 684,002 Hindus (2.7% of Australians, the fifth most common affiliation) and 210,400 Sikhs (0.8%): the number of Sikhs was 125,900 in 2016 and 12,000 in 1996. About half of Australia’s Hindus and seven in ten of its Sikhs were born in India. Punjabi is the fifth most used language at home other than English, spoken at home by 239,033 people in 2021 against 132,490 in 2016. The Victorian Government’s profile of the community lists the top languages used at home by India-born Victorians as Punjabi (77,605), Hindi (48,425), English (34,645), Telugu (21,162), Malayalam (18,608), Gujarati (17,847) and Tamil (14,083). Nationally 13.4% of India-born people spoke English only, 82.0% spoke another language and English well or very well, and 4.1% spoke English not well or not at all.

The newer estimate and who is arriving now

The ABS’s estimate for 30 June 2025 has the India-born at 971,020, up from 449,040 in 2015 and 724,060 in 2020. Their median age was 36.1, and there were 115 men for every 100 women, against 100 for the Australian-born. Migration is slowing from its peak: India was still the top birthplace among migrant arrivals in 2024–25, at 74,540 in the year to June 2025, but that is down from 111,340 in the year to September 2023, and net overseas migration from India fell from 70,130 to 57,410 between the years to June 2024 and June 2025 (ABS, Overseas Migration 2024–25).

The Department of Home Affairs counts grants, which shows what newcomers come on. In 2024–25 India was the largest source of permanent Migration Program places, 48,326 (Skill stream 43,634, Family stream 4,661), against 20,405 from China. The annual total was 24,324 in 2021–22, 41,145 in 2022–23 and 49,848 in 2023–24. Student visa grants to Indian citizens were 48,536 in 2024–25, 13.1% of all grants and second to China’s 88,014, and 23,665 in the six months to 31 December 2025, up 5.3% on the same months a year earlier; Temporary Graduate (485) grants to Indian citizens were 39,822 in 2024–25 and 26,116 in those six months. On 31 December 2025, 88,306 student visa holders in Australia were Indian, more than from any other country. Skilled workers on temporary visas added 26,875 grants in 2024–25, and 1,000 Indians were granted Work and Holiday visas in the first year of that arrangement.

Who was here first, and how it grew

Indians came with the colonies. The High Commission of India says a small group were sent as convict labourers between 1800 and 1816, that most Indians arriving in the first sixty years of the century were labourers recruited by the British government who later settled, and that in the last four decades of the century many Indians, Sikhs and Muslims from Punjab in particular, settled on the northern New South Wales coast as farm labourers, hawkers and traders. Others from Punjab and the North West Frontier Province ran the camel trains that carried goods and mail into the interior before roads and railways, and were known collectively as “Afghans”, shortened to “Ghans”; Wikipedia dates the cameleers to the 1860s to about 1900, working mainly for South Australia’s inland pastoral industry, most of them Muslim with a sizeable minority of Sikhs. Indians also worked the Victorian goldfields and, the High Commission adds, Sikhs worked on the banana plantations of southern Queensland. The 1881 census recorded 998 people born in India and more than 1,700 in 1891.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, the centrepiece of the White Australia policy, was aimed at restricting immigration from Asia, and the Indian-born population shrank. The High Commission puts the Indian presence at around 6,500 to 7,000 at the start of the twentieth century and says it stayed there until after the Second World War; censuses compiled by Wikipedia count 3,698 India-born in 1911 and 2,200 in 1921. After 1947 many Anglo-Indians came, and from 1966, as the policy was dismantled, teachers, doctors and other professionals; software professionals followed from the 1980s. The Victorian Government describes the same arc as three waves: arrivals after the late-1960s change in policy, large numbers of skilled India-born migrants in the 1980s and 1990s, and from the late 1990s students at Victorian universities. After 2001 the figures in the table above take over.

One settlement holds a different story. Woolgoolga, north of Coffs Harbour, is the historic Sikh farming town of New South Wales: SBS reports that Punjabi settlers began arriving in the early 1940s, drawn by the young banana industry of the Coffs Harbour coast, worked first as labourers and then bought land, and that the town’s first Sikh temple opened in June 1968 on Hastings Street. The same coverage estimates that about 90% of the region’s banana farms are owned by Sikhs and that Sikhs are at least a quarter of the town’s 5,000-plus residents. The temples directory lists the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple on River Street and the older temple on Hastings Street.

India’s count, and the older number

India’s Ministry of External Affairs table (data as of January 2026) puts overseas Indians in Australia at 845,800: 719,897 persons of Indian origin and 125,903 non-resident Indians. An older, undated table lower on the same page gives 976,000; treat both as the Indian government’s estimates, not Australian counts, and note that neither is a census.

Australia is six states and two territories, and for a newcomer from India the state matters more than the country on four things: the rent rules, the school fee for a child on a temporary visa, the driving licence and the Indian consulate that handles your file. The census counts by state for the India-born:

The last two columns are Home Affairs’ India country profile, which gives where each group’s visa grants went: students went mostly to Victoria and New South Wales, while skilled workers went most to New South Wales. In the ABS’s estimates for 30 June 2021 India is the top country of birth in Victoria and the ACT, while England tops South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, New Zealand tops Queensland, China tops New South Wales and the Philippines tops the Northern Territory.

The capitals

• Melbourne has the largest community: 242,635 India-born in Greater Melbourne (4.9% of its residents), 50,435 of them in the City of Wyndham, the council area of Werribee, Tarneit, Point Cook and Truganina. The Melbourne guide has the suburbs, rents, myki and the temples.
• Sydney has 187,810 India-born in Greater Sydney (3.6%), 47,090 in Blacktown and 29,100 in the City of Parramatta, and its Little India is Harris Park, a ten-minute walk from the middle of Parramatta. The Sydney guide covers it.
• Perth has 58,229 (2.8%), with Gosnells (7,659), Canning (7,570), Stirling (6,737), Swan (6,075) and Armadale (5,582) the council areas with most India-born residents; the Perth guide has the rents and the Western Australian school fee.
• Brisbane has 51,650 (2.0%), with Runcorn, Mango Hill, Calamvale and Eight Mile Plains the suburbs with most India-born residents in Queensland; the Brisbane guide covers it, including the flat 50-cent fare.
• Adelaide has 42,933 (3.1%); the Adelaide guide covers the suburbs, rents and schools. An Adelaide address files its Indian passport and OCI application through VFS’s Adelaide centre, which sends it on to the Consulate General in Sydney, and the temples directory lists eight places of worship in the city.
• Canberra is the ACT, with 17,203 India-born (3.8%), the High Commission of India and the head offices of the federal departments, whose Australian Public Service jobs go to citizens (the jobs guide explains). Hobart and Darwin are small but not empty: the temples directory lists a Hindu temple in Darwin, and Hobart has an honorary consul of India.

What changes at a state line

New South Wales has the dearest capital for rent (Sydney, A$800 a week in September 2026) and the highest school fee, for the child of a 482 holder, of the four states compared below. Victoria has the biggest community, a rule that a child on a 482 or 485 enrols at a government school without a tuition fee, and a ban on no-fault evictions. Queensland charges no school fee to 482 and 485 children, and its page on overseas licences sets no time limit for temporary visa holders. Western Australia has the highest wages of the states and the mines, a school fee for a 482 holder of A$4,000 a family, and the Consulate General that also serves the Northern Territory. South Australia files to Sydney. The sections below take each of these in turn.

This section is the map; the jobs guide is the territory, with the occupation lists, the points table, salary data and the scams. Every lawful way for an Indian citizen to live in Australia is one of the visas below, and none can be bought: asking for or taking payment in return for a sponsorship is an offence, as the jobs guide explains. The fees are the Department of Home Affairs’ charges from 1 July 2026, when most rose by about a quarter. They are for the main applicant, and a partner or child costs extra.

The permanent Migration Program

The permanent Migration Program is set at 185,000 places for 2026–27, the same headline as the two years before: 132,240 in the Skill stream, 52,460 for Family and 300 for special eligibility. Inside the Skill stream the places have moved towards employers and people already in Australia: employer-sponsored places rise to 58,040 from 44,000, state and territory nominations to 35,500, Skilled Independent to 21,090, while the regional category is cut to 14,110 from 33,000. India took the most places in 2024–25 (48,326): 13,193 regional, 12,762 employer-sponsored, 11,355 state-nominated, 5,058 Skilled Independent, 3,848 partner and 1,244 Global Talent. The jobs guide has the occupations, the invitation scores and the 2027 points-test redesign.

Students: the charge, the planning level and 2 October

The student visa charge rose from A$2,000 to A$2,500 on 1 July 2026, and the Temporary Graduate charge from A$4,600 to A$5,750. Home Affairs moved India to Evidence Level 3, its highest-risk tier for documents, on 8 January 2026, so an Indian applicant now shows full financial and academic evidence. The cap everyone quotes is not a cap on visas. The government’s National Planning Level is a target for new overseas student commencements, 295,000 for 2026, up 25,000 from 2025, shared between providers under Ministerial Direction 115 (in force since 14 November 2025), which gives faster processing to providers that stay inside their allocation. On 3 July 2026 the government held the 2027 level at 295,000 and said commencements were running below it, down 8% in 2026 on the same period of 2025. Home Affairs’ own program report says there is no cap on the number of student visas granted, and TAFE students are outside the level.

The newest change came on 2 October 2026. A new student visa application can no longer include a partner or children, and a student cannot add them later; most temporary visa holders, including visitors and working holiday makers, must now leave Australia to apply for a student visa, and from 1 July 2027 a student changing provider goes through a new transfer stream. Indian citizens lodged 34,512 student visa applications in the six months to 31 December 2025, up 18.2% on a year earlier and second only to China’s 37,500. The jobs guide has the living-funds figure, the work limit and the college warnings.

The trade agreement, work-and-holiday and MATES

The Australia–India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, in force since 29 December 2022, gives Indian students and young people two things that other passport holders do not have. First, the Temporary Graduate visa: Home Affairs’ program report says Indian nationals may stay between two and four years after an Australian degree, as agreed in the agreement, against two to three years for most nationalities. Second, a Work and Holiday arrangement for Indian citizens aged 18 to 30, operational from 1 October 2024 with up to 1,000 visas a year and a 12-month stay; Home Affairs recorded 1,000 grants to Indians in 2024–25. The agreement also has provisions for professionals and service suppliers, which are outside this guide.

MATES, the Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early-professionals Scheme, is separate: it comes from the 2023 migration and mobility arrangement, not the trade agreement. Up to 3,000 Indian graduates a year get a two-year visa through a ballot, no sponsor needed, with registration at A$25. The 2025–26 ballot ran from 1 November to 14 December 2025; Home Affairs had not published 2026–27 dates on the pages we could read on 23 October 2026, so rely on its MATES page and not on an agent’s message. A wider Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) is still being negotiated: on 1 October 2026 the two trade ministers met on the sidelines of the G20 trade ministers’ meeting and said they had discussed expediting it, and reviewed how the existing agreement is working. We found no signed CECA and no new visa rules from it.

Partners and parents

A partner visa is for the partner of an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or an eligible New Zealand citizen. It is one application in two stages, a temporary visa and then a permanent one about two years later (the 820 and 801 if you are in Australia, the 309 and 100 if you are not), at a single charge of A$11,710 from 1 July 2026, up from A$9,365. Someone in Australia gets a bridging visa on lodging, and a person who has applied for permanent residence can generally enrol in Medicare. A prospective marriage visa (300) costs the same. Parents usually come on visitor visas, A$250 outside Australia from 1 July 2026; permanent parent visas are queued and costly, so check Home Affairs for the current charge and wait. A parent who stays for months should hold travel or visitor health insurance, because a visitor has no Medicare.

The national paperwork is the same everywhere in Australia; the city details are in the city guides. This is the order that works, with the steps that need an earlier one marked.

1. Before you fly. Buy the health cover your visa needs (see the health section), check that the visa grant shows on the Home Affairs VEVO service, and look at the expiry date of your Indian passport: airlines want six months’ validity for India, and a new booklet has to be linked to your visa in Home Affairs’ system (the passport guide says how). Book a short stay for the first days rather than signing a lease from India; the housing section says why.
2. Day one: a SIM. Australia’s communications regulator says a prepaid mobile cannot be activated until the provider has collected your details and verified your identity, so carry photo ID. Keep your Indian number alive too: Indian banks, UPI and WhatsApp groups still send codes to it.
3. A bank account. Most Australian banks let you apply online before you arrive, and one university’s advice to students is that you still visit a branch with your passport after you land to receive your debit card, within six weeks, or you must show extra identification. Salary and tax refunds go into this account. Keep your Indian accounts open and tell the Indian banks you now live abroad.
4. A tax file number (TFN). You can apply only once you are in Australia and your work-rights visa is linked to your passport: the ATO’s online route is free, takes about 20 minutes and a notice arrives within 28 days. Give your employer a TFN declaration in your first days, because pay without a TFN is taxed at a higher rate.
5. A super fund. Your employer asks you to choose; the tax section says what to look for.
6. Medicare, only if you qualify. Citizens, permanent residents and people who have applied for permanent residence can enrol through myGov. A student, 482 or 485 visa on its own does not qualify.
7. A school place. A child on a temporary visa does not simply turn up at the local school in every state; the schools section has the rules by state.
8. A licence plan. Your Indian licence is valid for a limited time in some states; the driving section has the clocks.
9. A GP. Ask the clinic its private-patient fee before the first visit, and ask in the community groups for a Hindi-, Punjabi-, Tamil-, Telugu- or Gujarati-speaking doctor near you.
10. Your people. Join the Australian groups, go to a temple, gurdwara or association event in the first fortnight, and look at the events page.

Scams to expect

The High Commission of India warns on its contact page of scam phone calls that claim to come from the High Commission, VFS or the immigration authorities, say there is an error in your personal details, threaten deportation and ask for money. The Australian rental scams, a flat at half the market rent from an owner who is overseas, a bond sent before a viewing, are in the housing section. New South Wales’ education department has warned parents about a tuition-fee payment scam aimed at families on temporary visas, and says to pay only against the department’s own invoice. And nobody can sell you a sponsorship, a skills assessment result or a tax file number.

Most newcomers rent, and the rules are made by the states. The national picture first: realestate.com.au’s Rental Report for September 2026 put the median advertised rent at A$675 a week across Australia, a record, and at A$700 across the capitals, with Sydney the dearest capital at A$800, Perth at A$750 (up 8.7% on a year) and Melbourne at A$600, level with Hobart. The Brisbane guide, reading the Residential Tenancies Authority’s data for new tenancies in the September quarter 2026, gives a median of A$730 for a three-bedroom house in the City of Brisbane and A$650 for all dwellings. The city guides give rents by suburb, which is the figure that matters, because a Wyndham house and a Harris Park unit are different markets.

The bond is yours, held by a state body and not by the landlord, in every state in the table: ask for the receipt and the bond number. South Australia, the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have their own tenancy laws, and the caps differ, so read the state regulator’s page before you pay. What a landlord or agent may ask for, the length of a fixed term and the rules on pets and fees also differ by state: New South Wales has banned application and background-check fees since 31 October 2024, and Victoria and Queensland have banned rent bidding.

Three habits protect a newcomer. Never pay a bond, a holding deposit or rent for a home you have not stood inside, and never to an account that is not the owner’s or a registered agent’s. Check that the bond goes to the state authority. And never hand over a passport scan or visa as “security”. The Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane guides have suburb rents, the rules in full and the scams.

If you want to buy

People on temporary visas are “foreign persons” under Australia’s foreign investment rules. Since 1 April 2025 foreign persons have been banned from buying established dwellings, with limited exceptions; the ATO’s Foreign Investment Review Board page is reported to say that the ban runs to 30 June 2029, after an extension from 31 March 2027, and that it includes temporary residents buying a home to live in. Permanent residents were listed as exempt in the commentary we read, and newly built homes are treated differently, but the end date and the exemptions are for the ATO’s page, not this one: read it before you make an offer, and take legal advice. The states add stamp duty on top and their own surcharges for foreign buyers.

Tax in Australia is deducted from your pay at source, the tax year runs from 1 July to 30 June, and you lodge a return after it, by 31 October if you do it yourself. The jobs guide has the salary tables and the figures after tax; this section is how the system works for someone arriving from India.

Are you a tax resident?

Australia taxes residents on their worldwide income and non-residents only on Australian income. The ATO’s first test is the resides test: if you live in Australia in the ordinary sense, you are a resident and no other test is needed. Another test makes you a resident if you are in Australia for more than half the income year (183 days) unless your usual home is overseas and you do not intend to live here. For almost everyone on a 482 the first test settles it and you are a resident from arrival, as the jobs guide says; a short posting or a stay of a few months may not make you one, so check with the ATO or an accountant. A resident who holds a temporary visa and whose spouse is not an Australian citizen or permanent resident is treated by the ATO as a “temporary resident”, which matters because foreign income, such as bank interest or rent in India, is generally not taxed in Australia while you are one, with the exception of certain employment or service income earned overseas. That ends the day you become a permanent resident, so the date of your permanent visa is a tax date: plan it with an accountant.

The rates in 2026–27

For a resident the ATO’s rates for 2026–27 are nothing on the first A$18,200, 15 cents in the dollar from A$18,201 to A$45,000 (the rate fell from 16% on 1 July 2026 and falls again to 14% on 1 July 2027), then A$4,020 plus 30 cents above A$45,000 to A$135,000, A$31,020 plus 37 cents to A$190,000 and A$51,370 plus 45 cents above that. The Medicare levy of 2% is on top for most residents; someone who is not entitled to Medicare, as an Indian on a temporary visa is not, can ask Services Australia for a Medicare entitlement statement and claim an exemption from the levy, as the jobs guide explains. The national minimum wage is A$26.44 an hour from 1 July 2026, and a registered award, which applies on top for most industries, may be higher; the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94, with interpreters) enforces both for visa holders without asking about status.

Superannuation

Your employer pays super into a fund on top of your salary, not out of it: the rate is 12% of your qualifying earnings, and under Payday Super from 1 July 2026 contributions must reach the fund within seven business days of each payday (with exceptions such as new employees). Choose a fund in your first week or you are put in a default one; fees matter more than last year’s return. If you leave Australia for good on a temporary visa you can claim your super as a Departing Australia Superannuation Payment, taxed by the ATO at 35% of the taxed element for most people (45% for the untaxed element, 65% for working holiday makers), so about a third of the taxable balance goes in tax if you go home. Workers posted by an Indian employer may stay in India’s Employees’ Provident Fund instead, with a certificate of coverage under the Australia–India social security agreement, in force since 1 January 2016; ask payroll which regime you are in before the first payslip.

The treaty with India, and Indian money

The Australia–India double tax agreement was signed on 25 July 1991 and entered into force on 30 December 1991; an amending protocol, signed on 16 December 2011, entered into force on 2 April 2013 (Treasury’s list of Australia’s tax treaties). It decides which country may tax income that has links to both, and sets limits on withholding tax on dividends, interest and royalties, which we could not read from the ATO or India’s Income Tax Department, so read the current rates there and not here. In practice three things follow. Keep records of Indian tax you pay, because Australia gives a credit for foreign tax on income it does tax. Keep your Indian accounts, and convert them to non-resident accounts when you become a non-resident for Indian purposes, which the Indian banks explain. And before you send a large sum either way, check what it counts as: a gift, a loan repayment, a salary or a sale of property are taxed differently at both ends.

Medicare, Australia’s public health insurance, is for citizens, permanent residents and people who have applied for permanent residence, and a few temporary groups covered by a ministerial order. Australia has reciprocal health care agreements that give short-stay visitors from 11 countries limited cover: the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Norway, Slovenia, Malta and Italy. India is not one of them. So an Indian on a student, Skills in Demand or Temporary Graduate visa is treated as a private patient in a public or private hospital alike and pays what the insurance does not.

The insurance your visa requires

• Students (subclass 500) must hold Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) for the whole visa. The government’s private health site names it as a condition of the visa, and only a handful of insurers sell it, ahm, Allianz Care, Bupa, Medibank and nib among them. The Melbourne guide quotes about A$674 to A$719 a year for a single student in May 2026.
• 482 and 485 holders, and anyone whose visa carries condition 8501, must keep adequate Overseas Visitors Health Cover (OVHC) for the whole stay; the same site says to choose a policy that meets the visa requirements. Buy it before the visa is granted, for the whole family.
• Waiting periods. Most policies impose a 12-month wait for pre-existing conditions, and because cover starts on arrival, an illness that develops on the way is usually treated as pre-existing. Read what a policy excludes: dental, optical and physiotherapy are often optional extras.
• When you apply for permanent residence, you are generally eligible to apply for Medicare from the day you lodge, the Commonwealth’s private health site says, and you can move to a residents’ policy.

How care works day to day

A GP is the first door. Without Medicare the clinic charges its private-patient fee at the counter and you claim part of it from the insurer, so ask the fee in advance, keep the receipt and check your policy’s excess. A hospital will want your insurer’s confirmation before a planned admission. In an emergency call 000 for an ambulance; Healthdirect on 1800 022 222 gives nurse advice at any hour, Lifeline on 13 11 14 answers any hour, and the Translating and Interpreting Service (131 450) connects you to an interpreter. Ambulances are run by the states and charge differently: Ambulance Victoria membership costs A$56.47 a year for one person from 1 August 2026, and Perth bills people who do not live in Western Australia more than residents, so read your state’s rule in the city guides and join or insure before you need it. Victoria also runs free urgent care clinics that do not ask for a Medicare card.

Bring and keep

Bring prescriptions and enough of your regular medicines for the first weeks, because the public medicines subsidy is for Medicare holders and an OSHC policy covers only a limited amount per item and per year. Check the rules on importing medicines before you pack them. Keep your Indian health cover only if it pays for treatment abroad, which many policies do not. Parents on visitor visas should travel insured. The Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane guides name the hospitals near the Indian suburbs.

Government schools are run by the states and territories. Enrolment is free for citizens and permanent residents apart from voluntary contributions, and many government schools have a zone, so a child who lives in it is entitled to a place. For a child on a temporary visa the rule depends on the visa and, above all, on the state: the same 482 family pays nothing in Victoria and about A$6,400 a year in New South Wales.

South Australia, the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory set their own fees; ask the education department before you sign a lease. Dependants of a student visa holder are charged almost everywhere, though a doctoral student’s child is often exempt, and from 2 October 2026 a new student visa application can no longer include children at all. The start age differs by state: New South Wales takes a child into Kindergarten who turns five by 31 July, Victoria into Prep at five by 30 April, and Queensland and Western Australia at five by 30 June. Timing matters, because applications for the next school year close in the middle of the one before it: Victoria’s applications for Prep in 2027 closed on 31 July 2026.

Preschool and childcare

Childcare is the line newcomers misjudge. The federal Child Care Subsidy needs the person claiming, or their partner, to be an Australian resident, which for this purpose means a citizen or a permanent-visa holder, or a Special Category visa holder, or on one of the short list of temporary visas Services Australia names, among them a partner-provisional or protection visa; Services Australia also lists some students on Australian Government funding and cases of hardship. A family on a 482, 485 or student visa generally pays the full fee, and a long-day-care place in a capital can cost thousands of dollars a month, so join several waiting lists as soon as you have an address. Victoria’s Free Kinder for three- and four-year-olds does not ask about the Child Care Subsidy, citizenship or a concession card.

Languages and classes

Community language classes run in every capital: the Victorian School of Languages teaches Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu on Saturday mornings in government schools (its 2024 list; centres change each year), many temples and gurdwaras teach on weekends, and the High Commission’s website lists community language schools, among them the Canberra Hindi School and the Chennai Tamil School in Canberra. The city guides name classes by suburb.

Australians drive on the left, as India does, but the licence rules are made by each state and territory, and an Indian licence is not on the lists of recognised countries whose licences New South Wales and Queensland swap for a local one without tests. The rules below were read on the states’ own pages in October 2026, except Victoria’s, which is the Melbourne guide’s reading of VicRoads’ page; confirm yours, and book early, because test slots fill.

Carry the original licence and, if it is not in English, an English translation or an International Driving Permit. Western Australia will treat fourteen more jurisdictions, including South Korea and Taiwan, as recognised from 31 October 2026; India is not among them. The other states and territories have their own transport agencies; read theirs before the first month is out. The High Commission’s contact page lists Indian driving licence verification among the services that VFS takes for the missions, so ask the roads agency whether it wants one.

Two practical points. Car insurance and annual registration are costs that newcomers’ budgets forget, and outside the rail corridors a household usually needs a car, so the city guides put them in the budget. And an Australian licence is widely accepted as photo ID, so converting early helps for more than driving. The Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane guides have fares, tolls and the trains for each suburb.

Australian citizenship by conferral needs four years of lawful residence immediately before you apply, with the last 12 months held as a permanent resident or a Special Category visa holder (the visa most New Zealand citizens hold). Time on student and work visas counts towards the four years if it was lawful, but the final 12 months of permanent residence cannot be shortened: someone who has been here ten years on student and work visas still waits a year after the permanent visa. The application charge is A$595 from 1 July 2026, covering the application, the test and the ceremony. There is a citizenship test of multiple-choice questions on Australian values and responsibilities, and you become a citizen at the ceremony, when you make the pledge, not on approval. The jobs guide sets out the absences limit and the road from a 482.

India does not allow dual citizenship

India’s law does not allow an adult to hold the citizenship of both countries, so the day you become an Australian citizen you give up the Indian passport. That is why most Indians who naturalise then apply for an OCI card, though some defer it: a lifelong, multiple-entry visa for people of Indian origin that keeps the door open, with no visa needed for visits, no police registration, and parity with non-resident Indians in most economic and educational matters, though no vote and no government job. The OCI guide explains who qualifies, why a former Indian citizen must surrender the passport and sign a renunciation declaration first, the VFS appointment and biometrics, the A$ fees and the e-OCI that replaced the printed booklet from 8 July 2026. It also covers two groups who can qualify without ever having held an Indian passport: the Australian-born children and grandchildren of Indian parents, and the Australian spouse of an Indian citizen after two years of marriage.

Passports, children and the other paperwork

Until you naturalise, your Indian passport has to stay valid; the passport guide has the six VFS centres that opened on 23 July 2026, the fees after the July revision, the documents and the children’s rules, and why a child born in Australia is usually not an Australian citizen unless a parent is a citizen or a permanent resident. Tell Home Affairs your new passport number through ImmiAccount as soon as it arrives, because the visa is linked to the passport. The usual order for someone who intends to settle is: permanent residence, a year as a permanent resident within the four years of lawful residence, citizenship at the ceremony, then the surrender of the Indian passport and the OCI application. Keep the Indian passport valid until the ceremony, so that trips to India in the meantime are not interrupted, and ask VFS what it needs before the passport is surrendered.

Australia’s Hindu temples, gurdwaras and Jain temples are mostly in the capital cities and, in the Sikh case, in a few old farming towns. The temples and gurdwaras directory lists 73 places with addresses and the hours each publishes, checked on 22 October 2026: 49 Hindu temples, 23 gurdwaras and one Jain temple, in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Queensland, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, regional Victoria and New South Wales, and Woolgoolga. Hours are only what a place publishes; several publish none, so ring before a midday visit, because many close in the early afternoon.

Where to start

• Sydney. Sri Mandir in Auburn is recorded as the first Hindu temple in Australia: three devotees bought an old house and converted it in 1977. The Sri Venkateswara Temple at Helensburgh, the Sydney Murugan Temple at Mays Hill and the BAPS mandir at Rosehill are the other big ones, ISKCON is in North Sydney, and Gurdwara Sahib Glenwood is one of the leading Sikh centres.
• Melbourne. The Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple at Carrum Downs, Sri Vakrathunda Vinayagar at The Basin and the BAPS mandir at Mill Park; gurdwaras at Craigieburn, Keysborough, Blackburn and Tarneit; ISKCON in Albert Park, and Hare Krishna Valley in regional Victoria.
• The other capitals. Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra each have a Hindu temple, an ISKCON centre and a gurdwara; the directory has the streets.
• Woolgoolga. The Guru Nanak Sikh Temple on River Street and the older temple on Hastings Street belong to the town SBS describes as Australia’s largest regional Sikh settlement, and the heritage walk starts at the temple.

Visiting and booking

At a Hindu temple take your shoes off, dress modestly and keep to the visitors’ areas; at a gurdwara cover your head, take your shoes off and sit on the floor for langar, the free vegetarian meal open to everyone. A house puja, naming ceremony or wedding is booked through the temple office or a pandit the temple names, and the Hindu Council of Australia lists Hindu marriage celebrants and chaplains. Festival days (Navaratri, Diwali, Maha Shivaratri) bring crowds and changed hours, so check the temple’s own page the day before. The mosques and churches are not in this directory.

The census gives the context: 51% of India-born residents are Hindu and 22% Sikh, with another 11% Catholic and 4% Muslim, and the directory names each place’s tradition where its own site does, from Sanatan Hindu and Vaishnava to Swaminarayan and Sikh, which is the quickest way to find the one that keeps your customs. The city guides add the associations, student groups and classes in each capital.

Diwali is not a public holiday in any Australian state or territory, so the community spreads it over the weekends around the day, and in 2026, with Diwali on Sunday 8 November, the fairs fall mostly in the two weekends before it. The dates below come from the organisers’ own pages; dates move, so confirm with the organiser in the week you plan to go. The Diwali in Australia page keeps the full list and the events page shows what is added later.

Adelaide has its own Deepavali mela, listed on the Diwali page, and the city guides for Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane list the suburban melas, Bollywood nights and temple evenings that fill the fortnight. The Blacktown fair is promoted by its organisers as Australia’s biggest Deepavali celebration, and the Victorian Festival of Diwali is in its twenty-first year on Fed Square’s own page.

Fireworks

Private fireworks are illegal for the public in every state and the ACT, with Tasmania allowing them only on a permit. The Northern Territory is the exception: Territory Day, 1 July, is the one day fireworks may be bought and let off by adults there, within set hours. That is why the fireworks at Blacktown, Federation Square, Mount Gravatt and Langley Park are the organisers’ own displays and families light diyas, candles and rangoli at home. In New South Wales, SafeWork requires a licence to buy, use, store or carry fireworks.

The rest of the Australian year

Navratri and Dussehra fall in October (11 to 20 October in 2026), with a Ravan Dahan at the Hindu Council’s fairs; Durga Puja pandals run in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra; Vaisakhi in April brings nagar kirtans through Craigieburn and Blackburn in Melbourne and Glenwood and Parklea in Sydney; Holi falls in March; and Pongal and Makar Sankranti in January. 26 January is both Australia Day and India’s Republic Day, and Indian Independence Day on 15 August is marked by the associations. Guru Nanak’s Gurpurab in November is kept at every gurdwara with akhand path, kirtan and langar.

Every Indian newcomer in Australia looks for the WhatsApp group first: one for the suburb, one for the university or the employer, one for flats and bond refunds, one for a language or a district back home. They are how the community organises itself, and they are fast: ask at nine at night which GP bulk-bills in Tarneit or which registered nurse pathway is moving, and someone often replies within the hour.

What the groups are good at and what they are not

They depend on who you know, the links that circulate go stale, most groups show your phone number to every member, and answers scroll out of sight, so the same questions about visas, rent and school places return every week. They are also where scams start: a “sponsorship for a fee”, a flat at half the going rent, a job that wants a deposit, a call from someone claiming to be an official. The jobs guide lists the signs, and the housing section above says how to protect a bond. If a message wants money before you have seen the thing, it is a scam.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community’s app and website have local groups (moderated and tied to a place), events near you, a directory of Indian businesses and Ask, where members answer questions. You can post under your name or anonymously. The Australian groups are at /groups/in/australia; the events page lists Indian events across the country, with the Diwali page for the season; and the Australian directory lists Indian businesses.

Your first week, in practice

1. Open the Australian groups and join the general one and the one for your city. Read before you post: the paperwork answers are usually there already.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight, an evening at a temple or gurdwara, an association’s annual day, the Diwali fair nearest you.
3. Ask the question you actually have and say your state and your visa: the school fee, the licence rule, the health cover and the tax all depend on both.
4. When you have found your home, your GP and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Hyderabad, Ludhiana or Kochi.

The city guides have the groups by city: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.

India has five missions in Australia that handle passports, OCI cards, visas and attestations, and the one that handles your file is fixed by the state or territory you live in, not by which is nearest. The High Commission of India’s site, updated on 21 October 2026, lists the jurisdictions.

There is also an honorary consul in Hobart, who sees people by appointment and does not issue passports. The ones that catch people: an Adelaide address files to Sydney, a Darwin one to Perth, a Hobart one to Melbourne, and a Gold Coast one to Brisbane, not Sydney, since the Brisbane consulate opened on 4 November 2024.

VFS Global and the six centres

Most applications do not go to a mission’s desk; a few, such as life certificates and emergency certificates, do. VFS Global is the outsourced partner for passports, OCI, visas, police clearance certificates, Indian driving licence verification, birth and marriage certificates, attestations and renunciation of Indian citizenship. After a gap of 23 days when its contract lapsed on 30 June 2026, it reopened on 23 July 2026 at six Indian Consular Application Centres: Sydney (Level 9, 22–24 Market Street), Melbourne (324 St Kilda Road), Brisbane (127 Creek Street), Perth (23 Barrack Street), Adelaide (111 Gawler Place) and Canberra (40 Marcus Clarke Street), by appointment. The Adelaide centre sends files to Sydney and Canberra’s goes to the High Commission. The High Commission’s contact page says submissions are taken from 8.30am to 3pm on weekdays, with collections from midday.

Where each job is explained

• A passport renewal, a child’s passport, a lost passport or an emergency certificate: the passport guide.
• An OCI card, renunciation and surrender, and the e-OCI: the OCI guide.
• Visas and sponsorship scams: the jobs guide.
• The consulate in a city, with its opening hours and nearest VFS centre: the Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane guides.

In an emergency

Call 000 for the police, an ambulance or the fire service. For a lost passport, a death or a detention, the mission for your state is the first call, and the Ministry’s MADAD portal takes grievances once the published time has passed. Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) takes complaints about pay and conditions from any worker, whatever the visa. And if a caller says they are from the High Commission, VFS or immigration and asks for money, hang up and ring the number on the mission’s own page.