A - M
Abstracts of papers to be presented at Dragon Tails: Re-Interpreting Chinese-Australian Heritage
(in order of presenter's surname)
Surnames A - M
Robyn Ansell
Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria
A Goldfields Story in the Making: The Wives of Hin Yung and Ah Whay
When Bridget Delahunty was admitted to Creswick Hospital in 1872 with tertiary syphilis, she may have reflected on where she was likely to spend eternity. A subsequent wedding formalised her long standing de facto relationship with Hin Yung and made their four children legitimate. Five months later she was dead. Her oldest child, Mary Jane, married Ah Whay and relocated to the Chinese Camp in Tuaggra St Maryborough. A successful businesswoman and Labor Party supporter, she died in 1930 and is commemorated by a plaque at the Maryborough railway station.
While the Whay surname has not survived, descendants of Hin Yung live in Queensland, Victoria, Vietnam and Thailand.
This paper examines the difficulties of researching a family history when Chinese ancestry has been suppressed. It is illustrated by family photographs which confound the stereotypical view of the Chinese as outsiders in their community.
Kate Bagnall
Locating Chinese Lives; or When the Past Really is a Foreign Country
Up to the 1930s, hundreds of young Australian-born Chinese travelled to China, often with their families, for holidays, for education, or to be raised as part of their (usually paternal) extended families. Among those who made the trip to China were children of mixed Anglo-Chinese or Aboriginal-Chinese descent, white step-children of Chinese men and white Australian mothers. My current project involves exploring the journeys that these ‘non-Chinese’ members of Chinese families made to Hong Kong and China, using their travels as a way to contemplate the treatment of mixed-race Chinese Australians under the White Australia Policy, in particular under the Immigration Restriction Act 1901.
Australian archival sources, newspapers and family stories go some way to revealing what their travels were like and where and how they spent their time in China. Based on a recent research trip to ancestral hometowns in China, this paper will therefore consider the question: What more is there that can be discovered by visiting China itself?
Alister Bowen
La Trobe University
The Chinese Involvement in Victoria’s Colonial Fishing Industry
The arrival of many thousands of Chinese gold miners to Victoria during the 1850s increased demand for fish, a Chinese dietary staple. During this period, a number of Chinese people entered Victoria’s commercial fishing industry to supply their compatriots with fresh and cured fish. While the Chinese did catch fish, their major contribution to Victoria’s fishing industry was in purchasing huge quantities of fish for curing from European fishing people.
The arrival of Chinese fish-curers, purchasing large quantities of fish, in areas distant from Melbourne like Corner Inlet, Port Albert and Metung created a new and reliable fish market. This encouraged European fishing activity in regions previously regarded as unsuitable for commercial fishing. Surprisingly, documentary evidence for Chinese involvement in Victoria’s fishing industry is very limited. To explore and describe aspects of this Chinese activity, and to construct and test related hypotheses, historical archaeological investigation has proven a most rewarding avenue.
This study stems from academic research in the discipline of historical archaeology. The paper discusses several aspects of Chinese involvement in Victoria’s early fishing industry and the results from an archaeological excavation of an 1860’s Chinese fish-curing establishment.
Joanna Boileau
University of New England
Willie Young Lee and Wing Yuen Lee: Chinese Herbalists in Northern NSW
After the gold rushes Chinese herbalists set up practices in country towns across New South Wales, and through advertisements and word of mouth they attracted both Chinese and non-Chinese patients. Many provided a visiting service, travelling around a region and setting up consulting rooms in hotels.
This paper explores the practices of Chinese herbalists in northern NSW between the 1890s and the Second World War, in particular Willie Young Lee, who was based in Byron Bay from the 1890s to the 1920s, and Wing Yuen Lee, who practised in Murwillumbah until his death in 1958. Contemporary newspaper reports provide evidence of the business and personal relationships between Chinese herbalists and the links they maintained with their homeland. In 2008 I conducted an interview with the daughter of Wing Yuen Lee, Noelene Johnston. Her memories provide insights into how Chinese herbalists ran their practises, and how Chinese and Australian identities are redefined in each generation. The interview also provides insights into the silences and subtexts in oral history: Noelene's European mother denied that Wing Yuen Lee was her father all her life. A short film of my interview with Noelene will be screened.
Fred Cahir
University of Ballarat
Aboriginal-Chinese Associations in Colonial Victoria
Whilst historians have tended to concentrate on northern Australian analyses of Sino-Aboriginal relationships this paper shall explore the topic of Aboriginal associations with Chinese people in colonial Victoria.
Seeking a sophisticated understanding of the goldfields Chinese in Victoria, according to Reeves and Mountford, is difficult as they are a group who ‘seemingly disappeared into the historical ether according to existing histories of the diggings and conventional modes of historical enquiry.’ How much more difficult then to find documentary evidence by one historically imperceptible group upon another unrevealed group?
Locating 19th century Aboriginal perspectives on Chinese people is fraught with difficulties too given the emphasis placed on the transmission of oral history by Aboriginal people. Preliminary research indicates that Aboriginal people prior to and during the gold fields period viewed Chinese people in a disparaging light as from an Aboriginal cosmological perspective they were neither ngmadjidj (resuscitated clans people), as many Victorian Aboriginal people in the colonial period considered whites to be, or mainmait (foreign Aboriginal people). Yet there are records too of close cross cultural trade and social interaction within pictorial and textural sources.
This unveiling of a shared history offers a positive tension, an edgier elucidation, to the task of history interpreters such as Victorian heritage tourism providers.
Mun Chin
Chinese Heritage Interest Network (Director)
The Forty-niners of the Pearl River Delta
Traditionally “Forty-niners” has been associated with the California Gold Rush (1848-1855). The California gold discovery led to great dislocation of the local economy especially around San Francisco (“Golden Mountain”), as the gold-seekers, (nicknamed “Fourty-niners”, a reference to 1849), from all parts of the world headed towards San Francisco .
It is matter of well known history that the Chinese pioneers in the “ Gold Mountain ” had a hard time making a living. The Australian Gold Rush, reputedly started around 1851, gave the hopeful Chinese another land of opportunity – the New Gold Mountain.
In our research around the Creswick District, to our amusement we discovered a great number of the Chinese came from the Guangdong Market Town of, “Four Nine”, within the County of Taishan. These Pearl River Delta 49ners chose Australia instead of competing with the California 49ers.
In our paper, we tracked a number of Pearl River 49ners, who contributed to the development of the emerging Colony of Victoria, and also managed to help build the wealth of their family back at “Four Nine”. Using Public Records, Clan Zupu and stories by the surviving families in China, we gained an insight into the life of these hardy individuals, and the legacy they left behind. We also reveal how Clan and inter-clan support systems helped nurture success of a particular Clan. This is Diasporas at its best.
Helene Chung
Monash Asia Institute
Ching Chong Tasmanian Girl: A Reject’s Search for Identity
‘China Chong Chinaman’, the five-year-old heard jeers in 1950s Hobart where she was photographed representing China. When her mother spoke to her in Chinese, she withered while people gaped as though watching performing monkeys. Although her mother, a divorcée, used her maiden name, Henry (which the family changed from Gin), Helene was called Chung yet raised to think herself a Henry with near nought contact with the Chungs, which would later cause comic confusion in the motherland.
Adapting to the Anglo-Celtic norm, as a young adult she taught spoken English despite being warned, ‘Australians won’t want to learn how to speak English from a Chinese,’ and was hurt when rejected for the role in the uni revue of Queen Elizabeth touring Tasmania. Then she discovered her identity crisis had begun at birth: the nurse mistakenly registered her as ‘Helaine’; so Helene Chung wasn’t even who she thought she was. Not that anyone could pronounce her name, anyway.
Posted to the ABC Peking bureau in the 1980s, she adopted the Chinese name Zhong Hailien (Sea Lotus) but was rejected as Chinese, classified ‘an alien’ and never felt more Australian. Down Under again, the author of Ching Chong China Girl: From Fruitshop to Foreign Correspondent accepted life as an Australian Chinese – only to be rebranded a Chinese Australian.
Sophie Couchman
La Trobe University
Telling Chinese-Australian Stories
Since the early work of labour historians in the 1970s our knowledge of the history of Chinese in Australia has expanded enormously. The challenge is to bring these understandings to the broader Australian public. This paper explores the difficulties and joys of practically applying current perspectives in Chinese-Australian history to a commercial product aimed at the general public.
In 2008 I had the opportunity to work with the Chinese Museum in developing a self-guided audio walking tour of Melbourne's Chinatown. We faced a number of challenges in developing this tour. We wanted to:
- Entertain the general public,
- Stimulate listeners to imagine the layers of history that lie behind the present-day urban landscape,
- Introduce listeners to Chinese-Australian history,
- Engaged listeners with the built heritage of Chinatown,
- Tell stories about Chinese-Australians from their perspectives and that assumed that they were active participants in their own histories,
- Explain the story of the White Australia Policy and its impact on the area,
- Reveal the complexity and diversity of cross-cultural relations in the precinct.
Julianne Deeb
Creating a Community Museum
Creating a Community Museum is a 20-minute documentary about the development and creation of the Golden Dragon Museum, a unique community museum in Bendigo dedicated to the Chinese history of the Goldfields region. The film features interviews by those associated with the museum’s early history, volunteers who currently work there and performances by the Bendigo Chinese Association performance teams. Extensive use is also made of images from the museum’s archives and from the collection itself.
The aim of the project was to document the way that the history of the Chinese community in Bendigo was preserved and to show the enormous determination and commitment by that community to build a museum. The museum is unique because it tells the story of the Chinese experiences in Bendigo, it is not a museum of Chinese history, nor a museum of Bendigo’s broader history. It is also a living history in the sense that the community is still very active in participating in Bendigo’s events, both large and small scale.
The film was officially launched by Harry Charalambous, architect of the Golden Dragon Museum on 22nd January 2009. It has recently won a Victorian Community History Award for best audiovisual /multimedia piece. Creating a Community Museum was made in conjunction with another short documentary, The Story of the Pomelo Tree, which tells the story of a 100-year old tree in Bendigo used for ceremonial occasions and planted by one of the Chinese community.
The film was made by Julianne Deeb and features erhu music by Shen Pangeng. Julianne and Anita Jack, General Manager of the Golden Dragon Museum would be delighted to present the film to the conference and to participate in a discussion after the screening.
June Factor
University of Melbourne
‘There is a Disturbing Element Fermenting Trouble’: The Experiences of Chinese Soldiers in the Australian Army’s 7th Employment Company During WWII
During the Second World War, the Australian Army established 39 Employment Companies, totalling by war’s end more than 14,000 men. They were established to ensure that the Australian Defence Force had a large corpus of soldiers dedicated to essential labouring tasks, the physical labour needed to maintain the war effort and support the fighting forces. It was ‘hard yakka’, in the words of one of the participants.
Of the 39 Companies, 11 were made up predominantly of 'aliens': non- British citizens (Australians were British subjects until 1949.) Some were volunteers, others, conscripts. One company, the 7th, consisted - apart from its officers - entirely of Chinese nationals, many of whom were seamen stranded in Australia after the outbreak of the Pacific war. This paper examines the experiences of these Chinese men while in the army, and reflects on a range of responses to their presence in the military and the country.
Lyndon Fraser
University of Canterbury
Towards a History of Chinese Migrants on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island
This paper takes up the challenge set down by Jennifer Cushman for researchers to consider the agency of Chinese migrants as they built lives of their own within local historical contexts. It seeks to establish some parameters for the study of newcomers to the West Coast goldfields of New Zealand's South Island, a region with intimate links to colonial Victoria. To capture the distinctive tonalities of their social world, we need to combine transnational perspectives with the imaginative exploration of micro-level detail. Such a task requires close engagement with local geographical contexts and the tools of historical ethnography.
Warwick Frost
La Trobe University
Reinterpreting Chinese Agriculture in Australia and California
Farming by Chinese migrants is often characterised as a simple continuation of practices imported from China. Utilising a comparison of Australia and California, it is argued that what was developed after the Gold Rushes was much more complex. In both regions, Chinese farming was highly innovative, opportunistic and market-orientated. Crops grown were varied and determined by market demand rather than traditional practices. Farming was also distinguished by partnership arrangements with Anglo landowners.
Diane Gardiner
Public Records Office of Victoria
Forgotten Faces Exhibition Outcomes
The bilingual, Public Record Office Victoria, travelling exhibition 'Forgotten Faces' has as it travels around Victoria has helped to raise awareness of Victoria's Chinese heritage as held in the State archives. The paper would discuss research undertaken by individuals and groups such as in the Malmsbury areas and the research also undertaken using the records to help examine the economic growth and biological standards in China from 1880-1930.The paper would also discuss the role of popular exhibitions in raising awareness within the Chinese community of their rich heritage.
Gordon Grimwade
State Library of Queensland
Australia’s Long March
This paper provides an overview of the overland migration of Chinese migrants from the Northern Territory to Queensland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The route of some 2000 kilometres was taken by many Chinese migrants with minimal preparation. Overland migration was fraught with danger but it provided potential to enter Queensland without facing the challenges of poll taxes and migration enquiries and it was relatively cheap – if travellers survived the vagaries of limited resources, an alien environment and Aboriginal attacks.
Archival research has revealed cases of Chinese being arrested as they entered Queensland on the ‘Coast Track’ via Borroloola and Burketown. Police records and newspaper reports provide harrowing accounts of privation. There are limited first hand accounts by Chinese themselves. One relates to Lee Leong and a couple of mates who left Pine Creek with only their billies, and some tea and sugar. At one stage, they had to drag a rotting kangaroo carcass from a pool to get sufficient water.
Research to date has identified several sites with links to this migration route: camping sites, police outposts and the old ‘Coast Track’ itself. These will be briefly discussed.
Major research for this project was made possible through the John Oxley Fellowship, State Library of Queensland.
Crispy Roast Pork
Debate over the use of Chinese pig ovens in Australasia has raged for some years. They have been found in areas as widely distributed as the Palmer Goldfield, Queensland; Pine Creek, NT; Garibaldi, Tasmania and Ashburton, New Zealand. The paper is based around a PowerPoint presentation describing the morphological diversity of ovens in Australia and New Zealand with reference to the archaeological record, limited historical references and personal recollections. It highlights the roasting process observed at Chinese New Zealander’s property near Auckland, NZ in 2007. It describes the preparation of the carcass, the cooking process and discusses the events for which such preparation might be justified. It complements recent archaeological publications on this topic.
Derham Groves
University of Melbourne
Anna May Wong in Australia
In 1939 the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong visited Australia to star in a variety revue, Highlights From Hollywood, at the Tivoli theatres in Melbourne and Sydney. Wong also wanted to rally support in Australia for China’s war against Japan, and therefore the centrepiece of her stage act, At the Barricade, ‘dealt with the present situation in Tientsin’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 21/7/39, p.13). At a time when all Chinese-Australians experienced racial discrimination, and Chinese-Australian women faced sexual discrimination as well, Wong presented Australian society with a refreshingly positive role model for modern overseas Chinese women—a movie star and a political activist. Derham Groves’ conference paper, Anna May Wong in Australia, will examine the coverage of Wong’s visit to Australia by the local media at the time.
Nick Guoth
Australian National University
Cold Civic Receptions, Warm Woolly Jumpers: An Early China-Australia Sporting Experience
The early 1920s in Australia and China were years of worry, chaos and development of an identity. Amidst this, a team of Chinese soccer players departed a war-torn China for a country that explicitly ostracised their race through restrictions. Yet these sportsmen were promised an enthusiastic greeting and to be treated like kings; the tour being the first sporting team from the East to visit Australia, or any other part of the West. This paper will analyse and compare the treatment of the tour by the English and Chinese-language newspapers in Australia. Particular attention will be directed towards the three Sydney papers of the day, the Tung Wah Times, Chinese Australian Herald, and the Chinese Republican News. Through this analysis I intend to provide insights into ways the media handled the tour and, on occasion, used it to further they own agendas.
Dermot Henry
Melbourne Museum
Mr Catto’s ‘Top’ Paddock: Chinese Gold Nugget Discoveries in Victoria
Victoria has produced in excess of 2500 tonnes of gold (some 80 million ounces) since gold mining commenced in 1851. More than half of this production was from rich alluvial deposits. The occurrence of large gold nuggets throughout the alluvium provided the greatest fascination on the goldfields and was a feature of some deposits. Nuggets and nugget models were exhibited abroad to advertise the wealth of the Victorian colony and stimulate investment in the goldfields.
When significant nuggets were discovered during the 19th century, the Department of Mines recorded the information in a nugget register. The Department also made replicas of about 100 large nuggets, based on moulds or sketches and photographs. The list of 1327 nuggets compiled by E. J. Dunn (Director of the Geological Survey of Victoria) in 1912 remains the most comprehensive record of nugget discoveries. While many nugget discoveries went unrecorded, Dunn singles out the Chinese diggers, noting “many nuggets were found by Chinamen and accounts of these were rarely preserved”.
The geological collections of the former Department of Mines were transferred to Museum Victoria in 1988. These included the nugget replicas and associated catalogues and archives. Although the nugget registers record some Chinese “finders” names many are simply listed as “Party of Chinese”. Most of the Chinese nugget discoveries recorded are from the Berlin goldfield (now Rheola). At the rich alluvial workings at Catto’s Paddock, Chinese miners unearthed two of the largest nuggets discovered on the Victorian goldfields, “The Precious” (1621 ounces) and the “Kum Tow” (718 ounces). Models for these nuggets exist, and for others discovered in Catto’s Paddock, along with records for a few other nugget discoveries by Chinese miners. Mr Catto noted he had seen several large pieces of gold which had been subdivided from a large mass by Chinese miners (Dunn 1909), so presumably other nugget finds went unrecorded.
This collection of gold nugget replicas is the only visual historical record of these icons of Victorian geology. Recently, Museum Victoria has image-captured all replicas and enhanced the dataset within the keEMu database. Shortly this information will be available on a website.
Robert Hess
Victoria University
Playing the National Game: Re-Interpreting Chinese Involvement in Australian Rules Football
New research based on case studies drawn from around Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has opened scholars up to the possibility that Chinese involvement in Australian sport has been much more widespread and diverse than previously imagined. This paper endeavours to draw together almost ten years of scholarship that has sought to explore and examine the involvement of the Chinese and Chinese-Australians in the quintessential national game of Australian Rules football. Reference will be made to biographical profiles of individual Chinese football players such as William Ying, Wally Koochew, Les Kewming and Phillip Esmore, who participated in Victorian metropolitan and regional clubs, and to case studies of various Chinese-dominated football teams, notably those in the Northern Territory and Victoria (especially in the Ballarat region). In attempting to write the Chinese into the national history of Australian Rules football, some comparisons will be made with a number of groundbreaking international studies that have analysed the sporting activities of other immigrant Chinese communities, particularly those in the United States.
Gary Hill
La Trobe University
Building Bendigo: The Chinese Connection
When word of the fabulous finds of gold in Victoria spread throughout the world huge numbers, composed predominantly of fit males, with the means to do so hastily packed their bags and headed towards what they believed was a better future funded by Victorian gold. While this was true for large numbers it was not often the case for many from southern China who arrived on our shores. While their desires were likely the same as those from other nations most, even with help from their families and friends, lacked the resources to self fund their travel to Australia. For these poor Chinese the only hope they had was to become what was in effect ‘indentured’ to those willing to sponsor their passage.
As with all alluvial gold fields those at Bendigo had a short life. For the many Chinese who had not fulfilled their financial obligations by the time gold was no longer able to afford a living as well as debt repayments and the fare home alternative means of providing an income were explored. This paper looks at one of these alternative enterprises and discusses the construction and use of the only known example of a commercial kiln built by Chinese workers using distinctly Chinese methods both in its construction and its product. This kiln, built in 1859 and used until 1886 produced many thousands of distinct bricks and competed openly, and it would appear successfully, with a number of other brick works in a growing Bendigo.
Carol Holsworth
Golden Dragon Museum
A Hidden Victorian Pianist - A Ballarat Chinese in the 1910s
Cecil Long was a child prodigy who had a Chinese father who could afford the extra cultural items for his son and adopted family. Cecil was brought up in a Caucasian Sandhurst, Ballarat and Melbourne environment with servants. Both his parents suffered police charges which required them to move their business out of Ballarat. It was an alarming period for a half caste youth to succeed on stage, and to survive racism. After a concert tour in New Zealand and playing for silent movies Cecil found there was more money and style in making his way in life through their father’s Chinese herbal business. Cecil lived as a European in Melbourne and Sydney but traded around Victoria and New South Wales hidden under the commercial name of a Chinese herbalist proving once again that the Chinese herbalists business was one of the most profitable occupations even for a half-caste.
Yvonne Horsfield
Biographical History of Chinese-Australian “Pioneers”.
John Tong Way was my Great Grandfather, who came to Australia from China in 1882. He first became a catechist for the Wesleyans and then the Presbyterian Church, working and residing with his family amongst the Chinese community in Little Bendigo, Ballarat , for over 14 years until 1903. At this time he replaced the Superintendent Missioner to the Chinese and took up permanent residence in the Manse and adjoining Mission church at Golden Point, where he gave dedicated service to the Presbyterian Church and devoted his life’s work to the pastoral care and spiritual welfare of his Chinese countrymen. The format would be a powerpoint presentation with a spoken commentary, based upon archival material and family photographs contained in my original research.
Helena Huang, Joanna Fountain, and Harvey Perkins
Lincoln University
New Zealand’s Chinese Gold-Mining Heritage: (Re)telling their Stories
The past decade has witnessed a burgeoning interest in the Chinese heritage of New Zealand, particularly as it relates to gold-mining sites of the nineteenth century. This is apparent in a range of initiatives, including the addition of ten Chinese gold rush-era sites to the Register of Historic Places Trust in 2003, the recently opened Chinese garden in Dunedin and the plans to reconstruct the Lawrence Chinese camp in Lawrence, Otago. Most recently, in July 2008, a Chinese heritage trail for Otago has been proposed. This paper focuses on two sites at different stages of development in Otago (South Island, New Zealand) with Chinese heritage components - the Lawrence Chinese Camp and Arrowtown. Specifically, the paper explores the rationale for the (re)development of these Chinese heritage sites, the stories of Chinese settlement being told at these sites, and some of the challenges faced in connecting these stories and sites to potential audiences, including local residents, domestic visitors and international tourists.
Paul Jones
The University of Melbourne
Gordon Lum Bo Wah, Tennis Ace
Gordon Lum was born in Adelaide in 1906. A promising tennis player as a Melbourne school boy, by 1926-27 he was competing in the national championships. Such was his skill with racket and ball that he represented China in its challenge for the 1928 Davis Cup, and captained the Chinese team from the following year. Based in Shanghai throughout the 1930s, Lum won every major Chinese tournament and competed in both the singles and doubles at his first appearance at Wimbledon in 1936.
Lum’s story is curiously absent from both the chronicles of Australian sporting history and Chinese-settler history and, indeed, from China’s own history of the Republican period. Yet, by the time of his retirement from the international circuit, his career had taken him as far afield as the United States and France to contest leading players of the day. His skill had won over audiences and fans from Tientsin to Shanghai to Hong Kong and beyond, to the South East Asian region. His physical prowess exemplified much in the ascendant ideology of Chinas’ ‘body cultivation’ in the modernization imaginary of the Republican era. A British-Australian national, in WWII he found refuge in Hong Kong. His subsequent business career saw him return to Hong Kong, and then to Sabah.
This paper maps Lum’s careers within and without Australia and his travels and life after his retirement from the professional circuit. The intention is to recover something of this diasporic Australian’s influence on the game; to clarify the curious neglect of his contributions to the Australian and Chinese scorecards of national sporting heroes; and to explore how his story may add to our generalisations about the diasporic trajectories of those leaving their place of birth for good.
Andrew Junor
Sue Hodge Productions
Family Hand-Me-Down: Chinese-Australian Restaurateurs as Cultural Pioneers
Drawing upon previous research, my paper will discuss a family of Chinese-Australian restaurateurs whose culinary enterprise and civic involvement secured them a place of social prestige in post-war suburban Melbourne. Despite regular interventions from the Department of Immigration in the 1950s and 1960s, the restaurant provided the Doon family with a long-standing base for culinary popularity, social significance and political networking. Contravening the stereotype of Chinese-Australians as passive victims of institutional racism, the history of the Doon family demonstrates the methods employed by some ‘non-Europeans’ to advance the interests of their families and the broader Chinese community within the White Australian regime.
The paper will focus primarily upon how the Doon family negotiated the cultural norms of White Australia and established a relationship with suburban Melbourne based upon novel food and hospitality that lasted from the 1950s until 2007. The paper will also touch upon the memories of former restaurant patrons and staff, the broader transitions in Melbourne’s demography and food culture and the changing status of the Chinese-Australian restaurant. The paper will draw upon oral interviews, contemporary newspaper material, and archival records.
Barry Kay
Sovereign Hill
The Anti-Chinese Immigration League
In 2009 Sovereign Hill will present a new interpretive theatre event called The Anti-Chinese Immigration League. This marks a major step in Sovereign Hill’s endeavour to tell the less palatable side of the gold rush stories. The performance has presented numerous challenges in the process of development; not least of which is that there are no Chinese actors at Sovereign Hill. This presentation will give delegates a chance to see the theatre-piece following an introduction and background by writer/director Barry Kay.
Alastair Kennedy
Australian National University
Chinese-Australians of the First AIF and their British War Brides
Contrary to official policy, Chinese-Australians managed to enlist in the 1st AIF to fight alongside their fellow countrymen of European parentage. The story of these men, including those who acquired British war brides, has passed unnoticed, unrecorded and, in some family histories, conveniently forgotten because of the taint of ‘mixed blood’.
Some 15,400 war brides sailed for Australia in 1919 and 1920 to be reunited with their Australian Digger husbands or fiancées. Service Records at the National Archives of Australia show that 5 Chinese-Australians married British girls whilst in the UK and that 4 joined their husbands in Australia after the war. One more became officially engaged to a Chinese-Australian, was given a free passage as a fiancée and married her soldier in Sydney.
Did White Australia welcome these new arrivals or were they regarded as outcasts for marrying men of mixed race? Where did they settle and what did they do? This paper traces their experiences in rural and urban Australia between the wars and suggests that war service and a British bride accelerated their husbands’ acceptance into ‘White Australia’.
Jennifer Laing, Fiona Wheeler, Keir Reeves and Warwick Frost
Assessing Market Potential: Case Study of the Bendigo Chinese Heritage Precinct
The 2005 discovery of a 19th century Chinese brick-kiln at Bendigo led to the commissioning of a marketing and interpretation plan for its Chinese heritage sites. The aim was to lay the groundwork for the creation of a heritage precinct, which would act as a focal point for attracting visitors. One of the key elements of this plan was to consider the major target markets for the Bendigo Chinese Heritage Precinct; in particular the likelihood of the city attracting Chinese inbound tourists (particularly on Approved Destination Status tours) and domestic incidental ‘heritage tourists’. This paper explores the challenges inherent in assessing the market potential of a heritage destination, including the pitfalls of basing strategic planning and tourism development decisions on visitor arrivals statistics, without a deeper understanding of underlying visitor behaviour patterns and the broader environment. It examines external influences on visitation and tourist motivations, such as policy constraints, which should be considered as part of the strategic tourism planning process.
Gina Lennox
Charles Sturt University
From Middle Kingdom to New Gold Mountain
As an author of five non fiction books about contemporary social and cross cultural issues Gina Lennox embarked on writing up the history of four generations of a Chinese-Australian family for a yet to be published book ‘From Middle Kingdom to New Gold Mountain’, aided by a grant from the Australia-China Council to conduct research in China. According to family oral history their male ancestor arrived in Robe in South Australia in 1857 and walked to Ararat to mine for gold. In her research Lennox found that both in Australia and Taishan it was impossible to confirm the details of this man’s life so she ventured into the territory of fiction. The book became a creative work that combines imagination, conjecture and thorough historical research. In so doing she was able to describe conditions in China during the nineteenth century, especially in Taishan, which puts an entirely new perspective on the stereotypical view that the Chinese were fortune seekers. In fact many would now be classed as political refugees escaping the civil war between the Qing and Taiping, and the Taishan rebellion of the Red Turbans as well as the devastating inter village fighting between Hakka and Punti. By coming from a Chinese perspective Lennox was able to reinterpret life in Ararat, for example, linking one major confrontation to Chinese New Year, 1858. At least for the next generation she had documents to fill in the gaps of memory and with multiple resources could paint a detailed life of a clan store manager who was arrested for opium in the year it was legalized and who came under investigation for being part of an illegal immigration network.
However one significant document proved to be full of fiction. In 1935 the family moved to Hong Kong and became caught up in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. After fleeing to mainland China and opening a restaurant serving American air force personnel in Guilin, three members of the third generation were arrested for allegedly being spies for the Japanese. The BAAG report that outlines why they were arrested is full of conjecture and on many counts contradicts the memories of two members of the family who lived the experience – independently given and concurring. Thus the line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred. And so the narrative continues – with the family fleeing the Japanese advance and becoming part of China’s millions of internal refugees. As a result of one member’s relationship with an American MP in Kunming a member of the fourth generation is born back in Australia, growing up at a time of rampant racism and youth culture. In the book the eras in which the family lived are as important as the individuals, and by having a narrative that interweaves their stories Lennox is able to juxtapose different eras of Chinese and Australian history, drawing some interesting resonances.
Leonie Leung
Tracking the River Dragon: Re-interpretations of New & Old
This paper focuses on a number of demonstration projects that have been aimed at developing contemporary cultural heritage programs and initiatives that engage young people.
The projects featured in this case study were aimed at re-interpreting what is normally “boring history” into vibrant and interesting experiences that allowed participants to creatively explore their own journeys, and develop new ways of sharing their cultural heritage inclusively.
This case study shows how new and old Chinese cultural heritage can be utilised in a number of ways to generate 'a shared cultural heritage space' that provides opportunities to bring together different generations, multi-faith backgrounds, ethnic cultures and histories, and encourage a shared environmental awareness.
These community-based Chinese heritage projects have demonstrated that it is possible to develop contemporary inter-cultural spaces and initiatives that explore Chinese heritage perspectives within Australia’s diverse communities.
Chek Ling
Brisbane’s Night of Broken Glass: Whither the “Chinese Australian perspective”?
On Saturday night 5 May 1888 the glass fronts of all Chinese premises in Brisbane were stoned and shattered by a mob which at its height reached 2000. One culprit was arrested and 3 weeks later declared not guilty of malicious damage to property by a Supreme Court jury. Subsequently the Colonial Government declined a petition by the Chinese for compensation. The Brisbane City Council, last June, approved a grant to assist in erecting a storyboard in the middle of Albert Street, where the first stone was hurled. Joy, oh Joy! A memorial to the most significant race-incited outrage in any city in Australia. Alas, the search for a Chinese Australian perspective has proven to be less than plain sailing.
In this paper I explore the concept of the “Chinese Australian perspective”, through the challenges experienced in trying to get this project accomplished. In passing, I will also discuss how some of the indentured labourers (1848-1853) managed to survive through marrying white women, one as young as 15. Most of their descendants have passed into White Australia since, but some are known to proudly attest to their Chinese heritage.
Valerie Lovejoy
La Trobe University
‘In this Strangers Land’: Chinese Agency and Connections in Nineteenth Century Bendigo
Central to this paper is the story of Yick Yourn, recorded in his own voice, as well as the voices of Chinese and European witnesses at the inquest into his death in 1875. As one of few English language sources that allow witnesses to speak of their everyday experiences, inquests can be a particularly rich resource in discovering more of Chinese lives. They give a rare glimpse into the lives and connections of Victoria’s nineteenth century Chinese that challenge the boundaries constructed by historians who have traditionally considered racism as the sole determinant of Chinese and European relationships. These boundaries neglected the lived experience of nineteenth century Chinese immigrants within Australia as well as their cross-cultural contact with Europeans. Stories such as Yick Yourn’s contribute to the representation of the first Chinese immigrants as active participants in Victorian community history, rather than passive victims of European prejudice.
Darryl Low Choy
Griffith University
The Chinese Contribution to the Establishment of the Sugar Industry in Far North Queensland: Through the Lens of Two Pioneer Families
Contemporary European historical accounts of the development of Far North Queensland generally, and the establishment of a sugar industry in particular, are essential silent on the contributions of the pioneer Chinese community. This silence extends to the nature and depth of their involvement in the sugar industry and in the settlement of the north.
Whilst the early pioneering efforts of some Chinese such as Andrew Leon and the Hop Wah syndicate have generally been acknowledged, the contributions of many Chinese families has largely remained unnoticed in the literature and in the public historical accounts and records that are commonly sourced by students of Far North Queensland history.
This paper advances a number of theories for this omission and presents two Chinese family case studies to support this contention.
The paper will utilise the author’s paternal and maternal families as case studies utilising both written and oral historical evidence. Drawing on family and official primary and secondary sources the paper will examine the pioneer involvement of the Low Choy and Gee Kee families in the sugar industry in the Redlynch, Green Hills, MacDonald Creek/Fishery Creek and Babinda districts.
The conference presentation will be supported by photographic sources.
Paul Macgregor
Melbourne Chinese Studies Group
'Follow the Money': Tracking the Value of Chinese Economic Activity in Colonial Victoria
The level of integration of Chinese goldmining sector into the Victorian mid-19th century economy has been given little attention by historians. How much of the gold won by Chinese miners was spent in Victoria, how much was exported? Was it secreted back to China, as believed at the time, or was it used to finance trade expansion in the Asia-Pacific region? To what extent was Chinese-Australian business activity involved in the legal "drug trades" of tea, sugar, opium, alcohol and tobacco, and how much did these markets contribute to the Victorian colonial economy and the revenues of the government? How important was the black economy in goods smuggled into the colony to avoid customs duties? To what extent was cross-cultural cooperation involved in running the Chinese-Victorian economic sector?
The business career of Melbourne entrepreneur Lowe Kong Meng (1831-1888) offers a locus around which to discuss these questions. Contemporary accounts referred to him as "the merchant prince of Melbourne" and his firm "the Australian hong par excellence". By interrogating his financial and shipping arrangements, this paper will explore his business engagement with other Chinese Victorians, as well as his integration with the wider trade and investment communities of the colonial era.
Barry McGowan
Australian National University
Pastoral Workers, Market Gardeners and Entrepreneurs - The Chinese Diaspora in the Riverina District of New South Wales
In October of 2008 I was commissioned by the Museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga to research the history of the Chinese people in the Riverina with a view to mounting an exhibition in 2010. The project follows on from an earlier study undertaken by myself and Dr Lindsay Smith into the Chinese heritage of the Riverina and southern NSW. Although still in its infancy the new project has revealed amazing insights into the daily lives of the Chinese people in this region. New camp sites, artefacts and photographs have been located, and new insights have been gleaned into the importance of Chinese labour and enterprise for the rural economy, the internal workings of Chinese society, their relationships with the police and the justice system and broader European society, and the importance of fraternal and family networks. The project has revealed a complex society - one almost bordering on the multi- racial. But it is a lost history – the significance of which has been missed by most historians. Information to hand suggests that a major rewriting of colonial and post colonial history is in order.
Barry McGowan and Christine Wright
Australian National University / Braidwood and District Historical Society
Braidwood’s Chinese Legacy
The Chinese people have been an integral part of the Braidwood goldfields and the town of Braidwood in New South Wales from the late 1850s to the present. Braidwood Museum has been collecting Chinese-Australian material since the 1970s, acquiring items from the Nomchong and Quong Tart families. The Museum was aware that their Chinese-Australian collection was important; however, a recent significance assessment highlighted the national significance of some of the rare Chinese-Australian material. A recent heritage survey under the Tracking the Dragon program also highlighted the importance of the Chinese presence in Braidwood through the large number of commercial and residential buildings occupied by them. Our paper will focus on the importance of Braidwood’s Chinese past as seen through its built heritage and the Museum’s collection.
Tiina Moore
The University of Melbourne
Re-Enactments in the History Centre: From Robe to the Goldfields in Primary Education
This paper describes a narrative approach to the teaching of History at Years 3 and 4 at Eltham, College of Education in Melbourne. Now in its 8th year, the interdisciplinary curriculum of The History Centre frames students in role at significant periods of settlement. The unit of work focusing on the Victorian goldfields follows at least a year’s preparation wherein students explore issues of colonisation and uneven power. As part of their engagement with learning, they build the environments of the day.
The paper describes the way that students understand the Chinese migration to the goldfields in the colony of Victoria after gold was found in 1854. As a culmination of the year’s work, students re-enact the historical walk of Chinese goldseekers from Robe, South Australia to the Victorian goldfields in conjunction with the educational services of Sovereign Hill. It is a carefully structured and challenging way of learning that demands that both students and teachers ‘are protected into risk’. It remains for students one of the most significant experiences of their schooling.
The paper is enhanced by visual images of the program in action and by students’ own reflections on their experiences and the nature of their learning.
Benjamin Mountford
University of Oxford
Empire and the Chinese Question
This paper, touching on the author’s doctoral research into the importance of China in shaping British and Australian perceptions of the British Empire, explores the concept of the Chinese Question in late-nineteenth century writing about Australia. Taking a broad sweep of a range of published sources, it considers the ways in which a particular tradition of non-fiction writing approached Australian perceptions of race and empire. Its aim is to open up one investigative pathway to the notion of the Chinese Question, to touch upon its use as an intellectual framework for analysing Chinese engagement with the West and to offer some observations on its continuing resonance in Australian history.