MINGLING ON THE MAIN STREET

Far from being isolated in segregated protectorates, Chinese people, Aboriginal people, and people of many nations mingled on the main street, often as neighbours.

For instance, Joe Byrne, the doomed associate of Bushranger Ned Kelly, was said to have learnt Cantonese by mixing with Chinese friends growing up in the Victorian town of Beechworth in the 1850s and 1860s. Byrne and Kelly had Irish-born parents.

At its peak in 1859 the Chinese population in Victoria is estimated to have been around 46,000. In some gold digging villages Chinese people made up the majority of the population.

Beechworth, Castlemaine, Bendigo, Ballarat, Ararat, Maryborough, Daylesford, Blackwood, Avoca and a number of smaller satellite settlements and townships surrounding these larger areas, were home to significant Chinese communities. From the mid 1860s Chinese miners would also move to Gippsland.

This watercolour (above) by Horace Burkitt depicts two Chinese shops in the centre of the town of Creswick's main shopping precinct, circa 1859. Creswick, in central Victoria, 20 kilometres north of Ballarat, had a high proportion of Chinese people living in the town, plus a designated government-endorsed Chinese camp at Black Lead.

This photo depicts the mining camp of Burnt Creek (now Bromley) in 1861.

Burnt Creek, near Dunolly in central Victoria just north of Maryborough, was a rich gold town where a high proportion of Chinese were known to be working claims.

This photograph is thought to be of the Burnt Creek Chinese Camp, one of the largest in Victoria with about 2000 Chinese living there in 1861.

From the photograph it is difficult to tell the ethnicity of the several men pictured.

A Chinese man (left) is part of the group standing outside the Harper and Ferguson store in the gold rush town of Dunolly in central Victoria, 20 km north of Maryborough.

The photo was taken in 1861, after the peak of Dunolly's gold boom but still at a busy time for the township.

In this busy street scene of Ballarat circa 1857, a Chinese traveller (right) forms part of the bustling activity of this gold rush town.

MARRIAGE & ROMANCE

Despite anti-Chinese sentiment from some quarters, goldfields romances blossomed.

As the cultures mixed and mingled, some European women chose to marry Chinese men, who, if they had made good on the gold fields, could guarantee a wife a secure and comfortable life. Chinese men had reputations as kind and generous husbands who rarely beat their wives or succumbed to alcoholism.

Family legend has it that the already-married Gertrude Cox fell in love with her soon-to-be husband George Ah Tie when they lived next to each other as neighbours in Bendigo.

It's estimated that 470 marriages took place in Victoria between Chinese men and non-Chinese women in the 19th century, with many more relationships not formalised by marriage.

These marriages, which greatly concerned the authorities at the time, produced a new generation of Victorian children who led inter-cultural and sometimes transnational lives.

This photograph (above) is of Gertrude Ah Tie outside her husband George's fruit and vegetable shop in the Bendigo Arcade, circa 1890. George Ah Tie was a market gardener and businessman who owned six shops in Bendigo.

Londoner Sarah Bowman migrated to Ballarat and married Chinese merchant Lee Hang Gong in Creswick in 1869.

Unusually for a married woman at that time, she not only owned property but was listed on the council Burgess Roll, the list of property owners who could vote in council elections. Sarah was confident enough to petition the Creswick council for better conditions at the Black Lead Chinese Camp.

The Hang Gongs had five children when they moved from Creswick. They travelled to China and back, finally settling in the Northern Territory. Sarah Hang Gong’s sister Elizabeth also married a Chinese merchant. Elizabeth Young’s family, however, stayed in Ballarat.

Text written by Elizabeth Denny.

Pictured is Samuel Lougoon and his wife Mary Ellen and two of their sons, Percival and Clarence.

Samuel was a successful market gardener in Bendigo. Mary’s sister Louisa married Ah Loong and later their mother Anastasia Maher (nee Gray) married a Chinese man.

ENTERTAINMENT

Chinese dancers, opera singers, musicians and actors entertained communities.

Major Chinese settlements such as Ballarat and Guildford (near Castlemaine) had permanent Chinese circuses and theatres. Travelling Chinese performers would set up tents to entertain audiences in other towns.

The Victorian Chinese community of the 1860s was large enough to support a number of professional musicians and actors in their midst.

Chinese Opera was a popular entertainment format, particularly Cantonese Opera or Yueju, originating from Guangdong Province. This traditional art form involving music, singing, martial arts, acrobatics and acting, had men performing the roles of women. Other types of opera were also performed on the goldfields, for instance Minju or Fujian Opera was performed in Ballarat at Golden Point where there was a large contingent of Fujianese.

European onlookers had mixed, usually negative, impressions of Chinese music and opera, describing the sounds as 'horrible music' producing a 'tremendous din'.

By the 1880s the great era of travelling Chinese performances was largely over.

Travelling Chinese circus performers and other entertainers would tour the goldfields, like Chang the Chinese Giant, pictured here.

'Chang the Chinese Giant' toured the Victorian goldfields in 1871.

Chang Woo Gow, born in 1845 in Fychow, China, was 7' 8" (2.3m). He entertained the court of the Chinese Emperor then travelled to England, Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand before retiring to England with his second wife, the Sydneysider Catherine Santley.

The Creswick Advertiser noted 'he is pleasant and affable to all and seemed to take a pride in exhibiting to his astonished countrymen a high silver watch and guard presented to him by Her Majesty the Queen'.

FOOD PROVISION

An important aspect of the Chinese contribution was the provision of food to the colony.

Market gardens were set up by Chinese immigrants, supplying essential food and nutrition to most goldfields settlements.

The value of Chinese gardeners to Victoria and Victorians was mentioned in 'The Chinese Question' booklet by Lowe Kong Meng, Cheok Hong Cheong and Louis Ah Mouy in 1879, protesting against the anti-Chinese immigration laws. They wrote:

'It cannot be denied that our countrymen have been good colonists. Had it not been for them, the cultivation of vegetables, so indispensable to the maintenance of health in a hot climate like this, would scarce have been attempted in the neighbourhood of some goldfields; and the mortality of children would have been very much greater than it really has been. Lease or sell half an acre of apparently worthless land to a small party of Chinamen, and, if there is access to any kind of water or manure, they will transform it, by their system of intensive husbandry, into a most prolific garden.'

As the gold rush wore on, some Chinese miners turned to gardening and agriculture, building good businesses and even new industries, such as the tobacco industry of the Ovens Valley.

Their legacy continues: Chinese onions can still be found growing in now abandoned areas on the Castlemaine diggings.

The pictured map (above) is from a pocket-sized notebook used for field surveys of applications for mining claims. Each field survey is a snapshot of the site surveyed and includes details such as buildings, gardens and dams that did not appear on the later, finished survey.

This survey shows Chinese market garden allotments between the Yarrowee Creek and Humffray Street Ballarat East in 1881.

Applying for a garden.

In Ballarat in 1897, Ho Way put in an application for a Residence and Business Area along the Yarrowee near Humffray Street, in 1897, which was a popular area for market gardens.

Although Ho Way was able to sign his name in English, some applications were signed in Chinese, or with a cross if the applicant was illiterate.

Paying a yearly fee to the Mining Department was much cheaper than buying land freehold, and many people in Ballarat, whether Chinese and European, built houses and ran businesses using a Residence and Business Area right, only available in auriferous (i.e. gold-bearing) areas.

Ho Way also included a map (below) of the area he wanted.

Text by Elizabeth Denny.

Ho Way's map of where he planned his market garden in Ballarat, 1897.

The map above outlines Ho Way's planned garden boundaries. It includes Chinese numbers and English text.

The area Ho Way wanted was quite near the former Woollen Mills in central Ballarat on the Yarrowee River.

Today there is no trace of the gardens, buildings, dams or fences, that existed in Ho Way’s day.

Text by Elizabeth Denny.

Sometimes market gardening was the last career of a Chinese miner.

Older residents of goldfields towns still remember the elderly Chinese gardeners who would hawk vegetables door to door in the early 20th century.

Pictured (above) is a market gardener of Dunolly, a gold rush town north of Maryborough in central Victoria. The photo was taken some time between 1897 and 1910.

Chinese-run market gardens would become a staple feature of goldfields communities.

Later, Chinese would pioneer the Victorian market garden industry, setting up in Melbourne suburbs like Brighton, Camberwell, Coburg and Hawthorn. From 1901-1921 Chinese were the principal vegetable cultivators and distributors of Melbourne.

MEDICINE

Chinese doctors, herbalists and acupuncturists were widely used by all sectors of the community.

Chinese miners brought doctors and pharmacists with them to the goldfields.

Soon Chinese health practitioners were patronised by Europeans and Chinese alike.

After clashes with the Australian Medical Board, Chinese doctors in Victoria had to call themselves herbalists.

Chinese doctors practised on a circuit, travelling the countryside providing regular services to townships up to the 1930s.

Family stories from older residents of Victorian regional communities tell of parents or grandparents visiting the town's acupuncturist or herbalist for a consultation.

This photograph from the Chinese quarter in Ballarat shows Chow Yew Chinese Apothecary.

It was probably taken in the late 1870s to early 1900s, after the Ballarat Chinese quarter had passed its prime.

This photo of Charles Young Chung and child outside his herbalist shop in Williamson Street in Bendigo was taken around the 1920s.

Charles Young Chung had outlets in Bendigo, Echuca and Melbourne and operated as a herbalist until the 1930s.

COMMERCE

The path to success on the goldfields often lay not in seeking gold but in offering services to the booming populations of goldfields towns.

Some of the most successful 19th century Chinese migrants were merchants, storekeepers, hospitality owners, and other business operators.

Chinese-owned restaurants, for instance, were popular. The tradition of a Chinese restaurant in every rural Victorian town has a long history.

The most famous Chinese restaurant of all was John Alloo's, immortalised in this drawing by ST Gill.

John Alloo arrived in Australia in 1844, before the gold rush began. He set up in the gold-boom town of Ballarat, serving European-style food to the mining community in the 1850s.

John Alloo became a Chinese community leader. He was appointed interpreter for the Ballarat Chinese Protector William Henry Foster. In 1865 Alloo moved to the new gold rush town of Otago in New Zealand, taking his Ballarat-born family and European wife with him.

With thanks to Liz Denny for parts of this text.

Chinese publicans were common on the goldfields.

Pubs and hotels were the stalwarts of goldfields commerce. Many were run by Chinese businessmen and their families.

This photo (above) is of a Chinese man standing outside the Terminus Hotel, Dunolly, circa 1880-1897.

Situated near the railway line in the gold rush boom town of Dunolly in central Victoria, and built around the same time, in 1875, the hotel was directly opposite the Chinese Camp.

The Terminus Hotel was purchased by Wong Ying, who arrived in Dunolly in 1862 from China to work for his uncle, the store owner Sim Cum Yuen.

Wong Ying's family descendants operated the hotel until it closed in 1956.

Grocers and storekeepers made an essential contribution to goldfields life, provisioning the mining communities.

Chinese shops were ubiquitous on the goldfields, providing food as well as goods and services to the community. An integral part of Victoria's engine of commerce, they represented a focal point of the international import-export trading relationship between Australia and China.

This invoice for groceries is evidence supplied by a Chinese grocer chasing a debtor through the local Creswick court to get paid for goods bought on credit over several months in 1865, a common practice for shop keepers in goldfields towns.

The court was provided with an English translation by its Chinese interpreter. The translation shows that tea, rice, pork, pig’s trotters, cabbage and ‘joss paper’, could be obtained in Creswick in 1865.

Pictured above is the court's translation of the grocery invoice, and below is the original invoice.

With thanks to Liz Denny for parts of this text.

Merchants trading goods between China, Melbourne, Sydney and the goldfields had thriving businesses.

One of the wealthiest was Lowe Kong Meng, a Melbourne-based business man and Chinese community leader who was born a British subject in Penang in 1831 to wealthy merchant parents originally from near Canton (Guangzhou).

Arriving in Victoria on his own ship in 1853, he speculated in mining, owning a gold mine in Majorca, central Victoria. His main business was importing international goods and wares. He also dabbled in banking and insurance.

His fleet of six ships imported tea and other delicacies from around the world, trading with merchants in Mauritius, Calcutta, Singapore, China and also North Eastern Australia and the Torres Strait. He operated his business from Little Bourke Street, Melbourne.

In 1879 with Cheok Cheong Hong and Louis Ah Mouy, he wrote 'The Chinese Question in Australia', advocating for his community against the anti-Chinese immigration policies of the government.

He made many international journeys but chose to settle in Melbourne, marrying Mary Ann Prussia of Tasmania in 1860 and raising a family of many children.

INTERPRETERS

Interpreters were often well-educated and well respected leaders.

Government protectorates appointed Chinese interpreters to translate for official purposes.

They were usually well-respected men of the scholar class who often became community leaders in their own right.

One such leader was Wat Ah Che who was born in Canton (Guangzhou) in 1837. Arriving in Australia in 1857, he was soon appointed official interpreter to the Ararat goldfields where he was much loved and played a prominent role in raising funds for the first hospital there.

Naturalised in 1859, in 1863 he was promoted to the position of interpreter to the Bendigo goldfields. Later, he returned to Canton to marry Tong Chay Lye before bringing his new bride back to Bendigo. Chinese-born Mrs Ah Che was the subject of great community interest as Chinese women on the goldfields were a very rare sight. Their son, Victor Frederick Wat On Pong, was born in Bendigo in 1867.

Wat Ah Che and his family returned permanently to China in 1868.

The interpreter Abboo Mason was a pre-gold rush migrant from China.

He left for Australia from Macau in around the 1840s. His home province was Zhongshan in Guangdong Province. He was the interpreter on the Ballarat goldfields in 1867 when he wrote a report on the Chinese in Ballarat for the Victorian Parliament.

He is pictured above with his wife, Mary who he married in 1853, and their two children Joseph and Lavinia, circa 1866.

UNDERBELLY

As with all communities on the goldfields there was a dark side.

Although anti-Chinese propaganda tended to overstate the levels of Chinese vice, illicit dealings in Chinese communities were as common as amongst Europeans.

Although its use was not illegal, opium was becoming increasingly recognised as a harmful and addictive drug by the 19th century. Due to its ubiquity in Canton, a large proportion of Chinese sojourners were opium users. There were also many Chinese opium traders.

Gambling, which was a largely prohibited activity in the Victorian colony, was a popular pastime amongst the Chinese and the cause of many violent disputes.

Victorian society frowned upon both gambling and opium use, but this didn't stop European settlers from indulging when they wanted to.

Chinese communities were also accused of other vices, including managing brothels and dealing in spurious gold (gold-coated base metal passed off as pure gold).

Inquest records, crime reports and newspaper articles document many crimes and violent acts both perpetrated on, and perpetrated by, Chinese migrants on the goldfields. Crimes of violence against Chinese by Europeans were common and probably under-reported.

Pictured above is an extract from the London Graphic from 1880 illustrating some of the so-called Chinese vices. Fan tan, depicted in one of the illustrations, is a Chinese gambling game which was illegal in Victoria. It also shows Fook Shing, a detective and translator who was employed by the Victorian government to investigate Chinese crime.