Welcome to the Whittlesea Chinese Association Website

Many local Chinese residents living and working in the City of Whittlesea migrated from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland China, Macau, East Timor, Vietnam, Taiwan and Cambodia. Hence a local Chinese association was proposed in 2006 to meet the social, cultural, educational, recreational and other needs of the Chinese community within the municipality.

It was agreed that the main venue for the association activities would need to be acessible to local elderly Chinese residents and that the association would aspire to promote better community relations and an understanding of Chinese history, art and culture amongst the residents of the City of Whittlesea. The establishment of the Whittlesea Chinese Association (WCA) occurred on 3 June 2006 to cater for those needs.

The Association members speak a variety of languages and dialects, including English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Malay, Vietnamese and Timorese.

The latest Census of 2006 shows there were 3,369 people within the municipality who identified their ancestry as Chinese, an increase of 16% since the 2001 Census. Of these groups of Chinese ancestry residents, 3,107 have both parents were born overseas, while 89 stated that only one of their parents was born overseas and 78 have both parents born in Australia; and 95 people normally speaking a Chinese language at home had also risen significantly, to 2,611 at the 2006 Census. The main Chinese languages remained Cantonese (1,156) and Mandarin (925), both of which showed a significant increase in number, while the number of people speaking Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien, or other Chinese dialects remained about the same.