About OzLanka

OzLanka

Overview

OzLanka is a community news website serving the Sri Lankan community of Sydney and New South Wales. Published at ozlanka.com, it combines local community news, news and current affairs from Sri Lanka, photo and video coverage of community events, and what is effectively the community's noticeboard: a busy events calendar listing everything from alumni association outings and dinner dances to food fairs, religious observances and fundraising lunches weeks and months ahead.

The site is deliberately pan-community. In its own description, OzLanka operates for all Sri Lankans in Sydney, including the Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher communities, and it is run primarily by volunteers. Since 2019 it has been operated by the Sinhalese Cultural Centre, a not-for-profit registered charity in New South Wales, which runs it as an independent community service. OzLanka is an online publication only — it has no print edition — and it is not connected with eLanka, the separate Sri Lankan community portal published from Melbourne.

History

OzLanka was established in 1999 by Imtiaz Issadeen, a Sydney Sri Lankan community member with a long-standing interest in technology. Issadeen ran the site voluntarily and continuously for twenty years, building it into a fixture of Sri Lankan community life in Sydney: associations came to rely on its calendar to publicise their events, and its pages accumulated a long record of community functions, publications and announcements.

In September 2019, after those two decades, Issadeen transferred OzLanka to the Sinhalese Cultural Centre (SCC), the not-for-profit, registered charity behind Sydney's long-running Sri Lankan cultural hub. The site's own account of the transfer says the centre took on OzLanka "to continue the community service to the Sri Lankan Community in Sydney" and operates it as an independent entity, expecting to serve for many years to come. Issadeen publicly endorsed the move, commenting on the site that his decision to transfer OzLanka to the centre was "the right path".

Under the centre's stewardship the site was upgraded with sponsorship from Multicultural NSW, the New South Wales Government's multicultural agency, which funded an upgrade intended to maintain and improve services to the Sri Lankan community in the state. The site marked its long service with a banner noting that OzLanka had served the Sri Lankan community in NSW and the ACT for twenty-one years.

Content and Coverage

OzLanka's local news section carries community reporting from across Sydney: announcements from the Sinhalese Cultural Centre itself, such as updates on the centre's change-of-use development (with stage one construction under way in mid-2026) and its CommunityLink program connecting volunteers with newcomers; reports of commemorations, such as SPUR NSW's seventeenth annual Ranaviru commemoration held in Sydney in May 2026; alumni activities, including the Peradeniya University Alumni Association's annual weekend outing; and official information republished for the community, such as Australian Bureau of Statistics guidance on how Sri Lankans could get help completing the 2026 Census.

A Sri Lanka news section publishes news and current affairs from the island, while a features section carries longer contributions from community writers — essays, opinion, health and history pieces and tributes. The site also hosts community publications, accommodates photo and video galleries from events, and maintains resource pages, including COVID-19 information in Sinhala and Tamil drawn from NSW Health publications. The calendar is the site's centrepiece: at the time of writing it listed dated events running from October 2026 through to February 2027, submitted by associations, temples, clubs and charities across Sydney.

Contributors are typically the community organisations themselves. Bylines on local stories are credited to bodies such as the Sinhalese Cultural Centre, SPUR NSW and university alumni associations rather than to staff reporters, which reflects the site's volunteer, community-submitted model.

The calendar entries illustrate the breadth of that community life: temple and church events, school old boys' and old girls' functions, charity food sales such as the Sinhalese Cultural Centre's Sri Lankan food takeaway and the Sadaham Sewana lunch pack sale, club anniversaries such as the Sydney Sri Lankan Lions Club's ten-year anniversary and Christmas gathering, and forward fixtures like the Lankarama Summer Food Fair. The features pages, meanwhile, carry essay series by regular contributors — including a multi-part treatment of international balance-of-power theory by Kithsiri Senadeera published across late 2025 — along with health articles and obituary notices, which have their own dedicated section on the site. During the COVID-19 period the site maintained standing resource pages reproducing NSW Health information in Sinhala and in Tamil, an example of the practical, service-oriented role it plays alongside news.

OzLanka also hosts community publications. Its publications area carries newsletters issued by community bodies, such as the Thorathuru newsletter's special Christmas edition in December 2025, giving smaller associations a place to publish material that would otherwise circulate only as email attachments or printed sheets.

Audience and Reach

OzLanka's audience is the Sri Lankan community of Sydney and New South Wales, with some reach into the ACT; its content is written for Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher readers alike, in English with some material in Sinhala and Tamil. The site publishes no audited traffic figures, and none are claimed here. Its reach is best gauged by its role: for more than two decades community organisations have used its calendar and news pages as a standard channel for reaching Sri Lankans in Sydney, and event organisers are asked to contribute toward the site's costs precisely because it delivers that audience.

Digital Presence

OzLanka is a digital-only publication at ozlanka.com, built around its website. Alongside the main site, the Sinhalese Cultural Centre operates a CommunityLink site for its volunteer-matching program, and OzLanka promotes a forthcoming community directory and a community crowdfunding facility. The news pages are updated as community material is submitted, and recent local news items are dated through 2026, with the site carrying items from August 2026 on its front page at the time of checking.

Ownership and Organisation

OzLanka is owned and operated by the Sinhalese Cultural Centre, a not-for-profit organisation and registered charity in New South Wales, which has run the site since September 2019 as an entity styled "Ozlanka Services". The centre operates OzLanka as an independent community entity rather than as its own house organ, and the service is described on the site as independent. Day-to-day running is in the hands of volunteers, continuing the model established by founder Imtiaz Issadeen between 1999 and 2019.

The centre's own base is the Sinhalese Cultural Centre at 28 Cacia Avenue, Seven Hills, in Sydney's west, where its community food takeaway events and other activities are held. OzLanka's operations are funded modestly: event publishers are asked for set contributions — listings for non-ticketed community events are free, ticketed events run by registered not-for-profits attract a $50 contribution and other ticketed events $100 — with receipts issued by Ozlanka Services. The site also carries a donation facility and has received NSW Government sponsorship through Multicultural NSW for its upgrade.

Contact and Availability

OzLanka is available online at ozlanka.com. Community groups and event organisers can submit events, news and publications through the site, and the site carries a contact page for enquiries about listings and contributions. Contributions toward event listings can be made through the form on the site's OzLanka Contributions page, by PayPal or bank transfer. The site's news, calendar, galleries and publications are free for readers to access.