Macedonians have been arriving in Australia since the late 1880s on Pecalba. Pecalbari (the man in the family) would go and work overseas to earn money then return home with the spoils. This restricted major settlement. The two major waves of early Macedonian migration according to Peter Hill were when, in 1924 America implemented tougher immigration policies and in 1936 when the Ioannis Metaxas regime came into power. By 1921 there were 50 Macedonians in Australia, by 1940 this number had reached over 6,000., the majority of whom were from Lerin, Kostur and Bitola. After WW2 and the Greek Civil War many Macedonians from Greece came to Australia, these people are known as Aegean Macedonians, they settled in areas including Richmond and Footscray.
When the Yugoslav policies that encouraged its citizens to work overseas was started many Ethnic Macedonians within Yugoslavia left for Australia. The peak of this migration was in the early 1970s. They settled in mainly industrial districts, particularly in Wollongong and Newcastle, in the Melbourne suburb of Thomastown and the Sydney suburb of Rockdale. Many Macedonians from Yugoslavia would also settle in isolated parts of Australia such as Port Hedland. Most of these immigrants were from a agricultural background. Macedonian migration had slowed by the 1980s only to restart in the early 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
