Woolgoolga
New South Wales, Australia
A coastal banana-farming town in New South Wales where Punjabi settlers built Australia's first gurdwara in 1968, and where about one in six residents is Sikh.
Punjabi men reached the New South Wales north coast in the early twentieth century, many of them working first as itinerant hawkers. Barred by the White Australia policy from holding freehold title, they worked land they could not own until the restrictions eased. From the 1940s they moved into banana growing around Woolgoolga, and by the 1990s Punjabi families held the majority of the plantations.1
The First Sikh Temple on Hastings Street opened on 6 June 1968 — the first gurdwara in Australia. It was deliberately built in local vernacular: brick and tile, open plan, with a langar hall in the same materials, a building that looks like the town around it rather than like Punjab.1,2
Woolgoolga is unusual in the diaspora for its density: the 2021 census counted 1,059 Sikhs among its 6,151 residents, about one in six, in a country town rather than a city.4 A second and larger gurdwara was added later, and Australia’s Sikh population has grown very fast in recent decades, reaching around 210,000 by the 2021 census.1,3
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