Maronites in Melbourne

The second-largest Maronite community in Australia, rooted in the north

Melbourne holds the second-largest Maronite community in Australia, after Sydney. It is a community built along the northern and western tram lines of the city, in suburbs like Broadmeadows, Coburg, and Preston, and it prays in two rites of memory: the Syriac chant of the old country and the plain routine of a working migrant life. This is the deeper story of the Maronites in Victoria, a story the national picture of the Maronites in Australia can only sketch in passing.

Where Melbourne's Maronites Live

Unlike Sydney, where the Lebanese heartland runs through Parramatta and the southwest, Melbourne's Maronites settled in the north. The community clusters across the City of Hume, the City of Merri-bek, and the City of Whittlesea.

The suburbs that carry the community are Broadmeadows, Coburg, Preston, Campbellfield, Glenroy, Fawkner, Roxburgh Park, and Coolaroo, with a western pocket around Altona North. In the 2016 census, Lebanese ancestry was the second most common in Broadmeadows, behind only Australian. These are not enclaves for their own sake. They are neighbourhoods where a family could buy a home, find work in the factories, and still walk to Mass.

The Lebanese community in Victoria is religiously mixed, roughly split between Christians and Muslims, with Maronites forming the largest Christian group alongside Melkite and Antiochian Orthodox families. For the Catholic half, the parish has always been the anchor.

How the Community Began

Lebanese Christians reached Victoria early. Maronites were recorded in nearby Adelaide from as far back as 1854, and small numbers of families settled in Melbourne through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, chiefly from a handful of villages in the north of Lebanon.

The White Australia policy slowed everything. From 1901, only those with family already in the country could come from the Middle East, so the Melbourne community stayed small and tightly related, organized around village and family associations. That changed after the Second World War.

By the mid-1950s the laity were numerous enough to appeal to Lebanon for a priest of their own. Fr Paul El-Khoury arrived in November 1955. Four years later, on 16 August 1959, Our Lady of Lebanon in Carlton was consecrated, the first Maronite church in Victoria and the seed of everything that followed.

The Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975, sent a much larger wave. Families who had never intended to leave Lebanon arrived as refugees, and the Melbourne community grew from a modest parish into the organized, multi-generational body it is today. For the fuller arc of that migration, see the Maronites in Sydney, whose numbers are larger but whose story runs in parallel.

The Parishes of Melbourne

Our Lady of Lebanon, Thornbury

The mother parish of the Victorian Maronites began in Carlton in 1959. It has since moved north to Normanby Avenue in Thornbury, where it continues to serve the community as its historic centre of worship.

For decades this was the parish where Melbourne Maronites were baptized, married, and buried, and where the associations from each Lebanese village found a home. It remains the point of reference for the older generation.

Saint Charbel Parish, Greenvale

Saint Charbel in Greenvale is the newer heart of the community. It began in 1998 as a spiritual mission of the Antonine Maronite Order, when Fr Charbel Chidiac and Fr Edmond Andraos arrived on the Feast of Saint Maron, 9 February 1998.

The parish sits on Providence Road in Greenvale, in the growing northern edge of the City of Hume, and is known locally as Saint Charbel Village. In October 2025 the parish held an inaugural gala dinner to unveil its vision for a new church, monastery, and community centre, an announcement that drew support from the Victorian Premier. It has become the gathering point for Maronite youth in the north, and a living link to the devotion to Saint Charbel that gives the app its name.

The northern-suburbs parishes

Beyond these two centres, the Maronite presence extends through the northern and western suburbs, with communities and Mass centres serving families in Broadmeadows, Coburg, Preston, and Thomastown. These are the neighbourhoods where the census records the densest Lebanese ancestry, and where the parish calendar still shapes the rhythm of the week. For the full picture across the country, see the directory of Maronite churches in Australia.

The Antonine Maronite Order

The Antonine Maronite Order, named after Saint Anthony the Great, was founded in Lebanon in 1700. Its presence in Melbourne began in 1980, when four Antonine Sisters arrived to support the Our Lady of Lebanon parish then based in Carlton.

The Order's work in the city runs along two lines: the pastoral care of Saint Charbel Parish in Greenvale, and education. This is the pattern of the Maronite tradition everywhere in the diaspora, where the parish and the school are built almost in the same breath.

Antonine College

Antonine College is the only Maronite Catholic co-educational school in Victoria, running from the first years of primary through to Year 12. It was formed in 2005 from the amalgamation of the Antonine Sisters Maronite Primary School, established in 1998, and the Antonine Sisters Trinity Maronite Catholic College, established in Brunswick in 2002.

The college operates across two campuses in the northern suburbs. The Cedar campus in East Coburg serves the primary years, and the secondary years are taught at the St Joseph campus in Pascoe Vale South. The original Trinity campus in Brunswick was sold in 2010 to make way for the current secondary site. For thousands of Melbourne families, the college is where the faith, the Arabic language, and the Lebanese identity are handed to the next generation.

Under the Eparchy of Sydney

Melbourne has no Maronite eparchy of its own. Its parishes fall under the Eparchy of Saint Maron of Sydney, established in 1973 and later extended to cover all of Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania.

The current bishop is Antoine-Charbel Tarabay, and the eparchial seat is Saint Maroun's Cathedral in Redfern, Sydney, the church first consecrated in 1897. Melbourne's clergy, its sacramental life, and its Maronite calendar all flow from that one see. The distance from Sydney has never weakened the bond. If anything, it has made the Melbourne parishes more self-reliant.

Lebanese Cultural Life in Melbourne

The faith does not live alone. It travels with the food, the music, and the associations that Lebanese Melburnians have built over seventy years. The Victorian Lebanese Community Council, based in the city, runs the annual Lebanese Food Festival, which passed its fortieth year in 2025 and remains one of the largest gatherings of the community.

Around it sit the village and family associations, the youth groups of Saint Charbel, the aged-care and welfare services, and the ordinary Sunday tables where kibbeh and tabbouleh are still made the way they were in the north of Lebanon. The dabke is danced in Coburg with the same step as in Bcharre.

What holds it together, underneath the festivals, is the rite. The Syriac chant, the feast of Saint Maron on 9 February, the novena to Saint Charbel, and the daily habit of prayer are what the first families carried in their hearts, and what the parishes of Melbourne still keep alive. It is the same faith prayed in the villages of Lebanon, in the same ancient words, on the far side of the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Maronites are in Melbourne?

Melbourne is home to Australia's second-largest Maronite community after Sydney. Exact figures are hard to isolate because the census counts Lebanese ancestry rather than rite, but the Lebanese community in Victoria numbers in the tens of thousands, concentrated in the northern and western suburbs, and roughly 40 percent identify as Catholic, predominantly Maronite.

Where is the Maronite church in Melbourne?

The two principal Maronite churches in Melbourne are Our Lady of Lebanon in Thornbury, the mother parish of the Victorian community, first consecrated in Carlton in 1959, and Saint Charbel Parish in Greenvale, run by the Antonine Maronite Order. Both serve the Lebanese population concentrated across Melbourne's northern suburbs.

Is there a Maronite parish in Melbourne?

Yes. Our Lady of Lebanon in Thornbury has served Melbourne Maronites since the 1950s, and Saint Charbel Parish in Greenvale was established as a spiritual mission of the Antonine Maronite Order in 1998. Together they anchor the faith across the City of Hume, Merri-bek, and Whittlesea, including suburbs such as Broadmeadows, Coburg, and Preston.

Which Maronite order serves Melbourne?

The Antonine Maronite Order, founded in Lebanon in 1700 and named after Saint Anthony the Great, has served Melbourne since Antonine Sisters arrived in 1980. The Order runs Saint Charbel Parish in Greenvale and Antonine College, the only Maronite Catholic co-educational P-12 school in Victoria.

Does Melbourne have its own Maronite eparchy?

No. Melbourne has no separate eparchy. Its Maronite parishes fall under the Eparchy of Saint Maron of Sydney, which covers all of Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania, and is led by Bishop Antoine-Charbel Tarabay from the eparchial seat at Saint Maroun's Cathedral in Redfern, Sydney.