N - Z
Abstracts of papers to be presented at Dragon Tails: Re-Interpreting Chinese-Australian Heritage
(in order of presenter's surname)
Surnames A - M
Barbara Nicholl
The University of Melbourne
Chinese Restaurant Children - Negotiating Australian Lives
We love stories of pioneers, particularly those ‘British’ men who overcame great obstacles to tame the bush and establish pastoral dynasties in Australia, but what about the people whose forebears arrived in the nineteenth century from many parts of the world, who stayed and searched for a way of providing a better life for themselves and their families in the urban landscape? The early post-federation stories of Melbourne’s Chinese restaurant families will be the focus of this paper. ‘Restaurant children’ recognised the importance of fulfilling the obligations of their Chinese heritage, yet at the same time were negotiating their futures as Australians and opening the way for those who followed. These urban families tend not to be described as ‘pioneers’, yet in many ways theirs was just as valiant a struggle and the obstacles they negotiated from within both cultures no less daunting.
Rodney Noonan and Tseen Khoo
Monash University
Going for Gold: Creating a Chinese Heritage Festival in Nundle, New South Wales
Cultural tourism has become one of Australian tourism’s most lucrative sectors, and the regional location of many of its prime sites and events means that increasing numbers of visitors are travelling beyond the major cities for ‘authentic’ local experiences. A growing sub-sector directly connected to this is heritage tourism, which is of particular relevance to the creation and development of Chinese Australian sites and events. This paper focuses on the Nundle ‘Go for Gold’ festival, which is held annually over the Easter weekend. For its first six years, the festival had no relationship with Chinese heritage. In 2004, the seventh festival was branded as the ‘Go for Gold Chinese Festival’ and experienced something of a revival. It was held in the same place, at the same time of year, and featured many of the same attractions, but its transformation into a festival celebrating Chinese history and heritage has helped it develop into the town’s major community event. It is now second only to Tamworth’s Country Music Festival as the region’s major community festival.
Keir Reeves
Monash University
Economic Implications of the Movement of Chinese Miners to the South-West Pacific Gold Fields
The mid-nineteenth century gold rushes of the Pacific Rim constituted one of the great movements of people in world history. The Chinese gold seekers were the largest minority on the key goldfields of Australia and New Zealand and sometimes they constituted the largest nationality on key diggings. This presentation considers the movement of the Chinese miners to and throughout the goldfields colonies of the south-west Pacific. In doing so it argues for a more complex pattern of migration than that suggested by the sojourner model. Mindful of, but eschewing, debates about race and cultural encounters this article concentrates on the movement of people and the transmission of ideas and capital.
Jonathan Richards
Griffith University
A Chinese Invasion
In early 1899, a group of 27 Chinese men disembarked at Darwin from the steamer Chingtu. Under the watchful eye of one Queensland constable, they had travelled from Townsville after completing six month sentences for breaching the colony’s Chinese Immigration Act. Arrested after they crossed the Northern Territory border, the men were tried at Camooweal and taken to Townsville prison because each of them could not pay a 50 Pound fine.
This paper tells the story of this and some other ‘border protection’ episodes in Queensland’s northwest. The 1899 passage reminds us that paranoia and xenophobia are not new, nor confined to people from foreign places. In colonial times, before Federation, each colony tried to exclude Chinese and other ‘aliens’ by sending them back to whence they came. Close examination shows that rumour, political intrigue and destitution were key parts of the story.
During the previous fifteen years, numbers of Chinese were apprehended ‘illegally’ crossing the border from the Northern Territory into Queensland. Most were turned loose at the border and ‘deported’ back into the Northern Territory, but this group, the last arrested under this Act, were instead conveyed to Townsville, accommodated in Her Majesty’s jail and placed on a steamer back to Darwin.
Sandi Robb
James Cook University
'One is Tempted to Ask… Whether One is in an English Colony, or in a Chinese Town, the Pig Tails are so Plentiful.' Chinatowns and Market Gardens: Chinese Precincts Across North Queensland
North Queensland, a vast and diverse region, is regarded as a source of rich opportunity- a view which has not wavered since European exploration in the 1840s. Chinese settlement patterns are entwined in the history of the northern region and are characterized in two ways: precincts associated with the lucrative trade in the port and agricultural towns of the east coast and precincts associated with settlements and towns beyond the hinterland in the western gulf region. Chinese precincts were once considered to be homogenous communities. However the reality is they were diverse, multicultural and highly dependant on the economic fortunes of the district. It is argued that Chinese settlement longevity lies not with the size of the community or its capacity to form a “Chinatown”, but through an ability of the Chinese settlers to find niche economic markets enhanced by business acumen. While there were varied and fragile links with the broader European community, longevity in most cases was due to the stoic Chinese capacity to endure broader community antagonism.
Pauline Rule
A Transnational Chinese-Australian Family and the ‘New China’
Chung Mow Fung arrived in Melbourne in 1857 as a single man and left nearly forty years later in 1895 to settle in Hong Kong together with his Chinese wife and a large family of eight surviving colonial born children. Twenty-five years of constructing a family in country Victoria had seen Chung Mow Fung and his wife Huish Huish negotiate between Australian and Chinese culture and between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ values especially in the area of gender roles. Settlement in the complicated liminal space of Anglo-Chinese Hong Kong allowed the family to identify to varying degrees with the different parts of their cultural formation. Their Australian background was acknowledged and their life-style was largely westernised but some members of the family became involved in the Republican era in the struggle to change aspects of Chinese culture, especially the role of women. This paper will examine how the Australian childhood of the family members played some part in how they, especially the women, lived out their adult lives while also retaining a strong commitment to their Chinese heritage.
Jim Quinn, Dianne McGrath, Lynne Devlin, Jennifer Jeffrey, Annemarie Kierce
Ballarat China Community Centre
Cemeteries: A Living History and a New History – The Chinese in Ballarat, Australia (Roundtable Discussion)
Preamble:
Since the early 1990s the contribution and place of the Chinese in Ballarat society has been presented and represented in a number of unique ways. Much (All) has come about because of serendipitous events and writings in and about the Chinese Cemeteries. The developments occurred because of the interests and enthusiasm of individuals and school and community groups that has resulted in the unique activities of today.
Discussion:
Ballarat’s historical precincts, in particular the Chinese sections in the Ballaarat Old and New General Cemeteries, provide an opportunity for all to gain an understanding of cultural aspects of the Chinese on the Ballarat goldfields in the 1850’s and the Chinese today.
Important works such as, “Fading Links to China: Ballarat’s Chinese Gravestones and Associated Records 1854 – 1955” published in 1992, provide a unique insight into aspects of the Chinese of the 19th century. The records and publications of the Ballaarat General Cemeteries including Trust records and the Ballarat Cemeteries Index, a joint research project with the Ballarat and District Genealogical Society provide additional material.
Contemporary developments in and associated with the Chinese section of the New Ballaarat Cemetery have seen a re-invigoration of aspects of Chinese culture in Ballarat. These developments have made a significant contribution to an understanding of the place of the Chinese in Ballarat. Importantly much of the contemporary developments has been initiated and led by primary school teachers and their students.
The papers in this discussion session will consider these contemporary activities and the research that informs them which are enhancing a fuller understanding of the Chinese in Ballarat and the broader Australian Community. They will cover the tours of and research into the Chinese sections of Ballaarat General Cemeteries; the contemporary developments of the restoration, the re-consecration of the Chinese section of the New Ballaarat Cemetery and the subsequent development of the Chinese Garden- the Gum Loong Friendship Garden, and the Moon Gate. The garden built in 1997 and 1998 follow the principles of Feng Shui. Support from the Ballarat Chinese Community Association ensured that the Garden was developed sympathetically to the wishes of the community. Recently two Unicorns have been added to stand either side of the Moon Gate providing protection, wealth and good luck to the area.
The dragon- Gum Loong, a 40 metre authentic Chinese dragon was built by the students and staff of three local primary schools, Canadian Lead, Mt Blowhard and Sebastopol. The schools worked closely with the local Ballarat Chinese Community Association ensuring Chinese traditions were observed and valued. New traditions were forged as Gum Loong became a link between the past present and future of Ballarat.
Sovereign Hill delivers a rich interpretation of the social and mining history of Ballarat’s Gold Rush, the Chinese story is an important part. Sovereign Hill Education has planned and developed creative, interactive primary and secondary education programs for students studying the “Chinese on the goldfields” which include; Chinese Camp tours. Using the audio-visual and soundscape resources, students explore life in the recreated Chinese Camp in January 1858 and the miners’ protests against the restrictions imposed on them.
Together these activities and developments have lead to a rekindling of interest, appreciation and respect for the Chinese in Ballarat. Importantly much of this appreciation and understanding of the Chinese presence and contribution to Ballarat resides in the city’s primary schools.
Dawn Wong
Legacies of Lives Long Past
This paper focuses on the Wong Family of New South Wales, described by the Powerhouse Museum as “an important example of cultural integration in an era marked by hostility towards Chinese people and ‘racial mixing’ in Australia.”
Amelia Hackney and her family arrived from England in 1853. Wong Sat arrived in 1857, presumably from southern China. They married in 1864 and began to build the legacies their descendants now recognise and celebrate:
The main legacy is the family, now into a seventh generation, but from its earliest days taking little from its Chinese heritage and integrating almost seamlessly into society.
There is land, painstakingly acquired over many years, and still held by a descendant 130 years after Wong Sat’s naturalisation.
Family photographs and personal letters put faces to names and hint at personalities. Probate and other Court records reveal fascinating perspectives on family assets and relationships.
But there are mysteries too, the stuff of family legend: how did these two meet and form a relationship? Did Wong Sat really speak on behalf of the Chinese after the Lambing Flat riots?
And how did a handwritten English Chinese vocabulary book, prepared by James McCulloch Henley, describing himself as “Anglo Chinese Linguist and Translator”, come to be among the papers of one of Amelia’s brothers?
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