Demography
According to the 2006 Australian Census, 23,305 Australians were born in Chile while 25,439 claimed Chilean ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry. However the ancestry figure may not accurately represent the Chilean-Australian population, since persons of Chilean descent often chose to identify with other, sometimes older ancestries. The Australian 2001 Census reports that 63% of Chilean-born respondents nominated their leading ancestry as Spaniard, while others nominated a Croatian (19%), German (8%), Italian (6%) or English (4%) ancestry.
The largest Chilean Australian communities are in Sydney (10,909 residents, 2006 Census result) and Melbourne (6,530).
A Chilean government study conducted by the Chilean National Institute of Statistics in 2003-04 and published in 2005 found that 33,626 first and second generation Chileans were living in Australia. This figure was gathered by combining the population reported in the 2001 Australian Census and the National Registry for Chileans living abroad. One estimate of Chilean-Australians (including those born in Chile and those of Chilean descent) is approximately 40,000, another 2006 estimate is as high as 45,000.
Read more about this topic: Chilean Australian