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Valerie Lovejoy - Chinese in the Bendigo goldfields

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Matt Smith

When gold was discovered in Australia in the 1850s, it led to a gold rush. Prospectors came to the country from all over the world, with the largest foreign contingent coming from China. I'm Matt Smith and you're listening to a La Trobe University podcast. My guest today is Dr Valerie Lovejoy. Her PhD was on Chinese immigrants in the goldfields in Bendigo.

Valerie Lovejoy

The first record that I can find is in the Bendigo Advertiser and my study I must emphasise was centred around the Bendigo area, and the first mention that I could find of a presence on the goldfields was in 1854. I think it was June 1854, recorded the first arrival. Those were the alluvial gold seekers. They came after gold. But before they'd arrived, there was a presence in Australia of indentured workers, and there's been a lot of speculation that the message actually got back to China about the discovery of gold in Victoria from these indentured labourers. And there's a bit of support from that because there was one in particular called Louis Ah Mouy, who was an indentured carpenter in Victoria, and he was related by surname and therefore by clan, to a lot of Chinese who came directly to the central Victorian goldfields. Bendigo itself was known as a Louis destination. And the gold seekers tended to travel in groups. It was quite a business. There were agents in Hong Kong who organised for groups of men to come, often from rural villages, they would be transported to Australia often on British ships. When they arrived here they were very well supported with society groups that set up accommodation for them and equipped them and then they trecked from Melbourne generally to Bendigo and other fields, and I guess their intention was to strike it rich and return home. And in that they weren't all that different, I'd like to emphasise, from most of the people who came gold seeking, whether from England or America or anywhere else. And it's been estimated that maybe as many as a quarter went back to China but others remained in Victoria for as long as the alluvial gold held out and then moved out to other goldfields in Australia or indeed, they were invited to New Zealand in 1865, when gold was discovered there.

Matt Smith

So when they came to Australia and to Bendigo, you said that they came over here on British ships sometimes, I'm assuming that they came over, they prospected for gold, and then they had to pay off their passage and then send any money that they've made back to their families. Is that right?

Valerie Lovejoy

That's correct. You know, some people have said they were like slave labour, but it's not like that in any sense. A credit ticket was often the way that they came which was they'd borrowed the money, and it could have been from their families, from a business person, or from an agent, and they had to repay that debt. Once they'd repaid the debt, then they were free to continue to prospect and they returned to China if and when they made enough money to do so.

Matt Smith

So they weren't coming out here as settlers. Did any of them bring their families?

Valerie Lovejoy

Some of the wealthier ones. It's important to make a distinction between the ones who came to prospect for gold and others that came because they saw a business opportunity. The majority of the early Chinese came to regional areas, over 90%, but there were business opportunities in Melbourne. And some of those wealthier Chinese did bring their wives with them. Very few. The ones who came to the goldfields, John Fitzgerald has suggested, and that's certainly accords with what they said at the time, was that they came to see what the prospects were like. They weren't going to bring their wives to the goldfields, travelling over rough terrain, living in inhospitable conditions, when there was the prospect that life might not work out.

Matt Smith

You said that the first mention of Chinese prospectors in the Bendigo area was in the Advertiser from 1854. What context were they talking about, the prospectors there, and what sort of reception were they having at the time?

Valerie Lovejoy

In the very first mention it was simply said that a large group of Chinese had arrived in Bendigo under the leadership of the revolutionary king of the south. There's never any explanation of what that meant. There are other mentions, sort of fairly early on, that talk about settlements being set up in various parts of Bendigo. But quite early on in Bendigo, in 1854 in fact, there was an anticipated rebellion organised by the Europeans go drive the Chinese off the fields, it was supposed to be organised for American Independence Day, but it was pretty quickly put down by the authorities.

Matt Smith

Was that kind of underlying tension normal, or was it just a one-off …

Valerie Lovejoy

I think there were always difficult relationships in the early days. Some people said it was over the way the Chinese managed water. I think it was more likely the significant numbers of the Chinese that came to the fields and their direct competition with European miners for the gold. In 1855, it's probably the high point of Chinese population on the Bendigo goldfield, there were nearly 6,000 Chinese miners and there were only 13,000 European miners in direct competition. I don't think it's true to say as some historians have, that the Chinese simply worked over alluvial fields that had been worked out before. That economic grounds for conflict was there plus there's also the lack of a common understanding as regards cultural differences and no common language, that made relationships difficult in the early days.

Matt Smith

How much of their own culture did the Chinese prospectors bring with them?

Valerie Lovejoy

Well, I'd say everything, and I'd say it was really important for their survival in the early days. I mean, no doubt their whole way of life had to be modified because they were living in a foreign community, but pretty early on, in response to this potential conflict between European and Chinese miners, a protectorate was set up and Chinese miners were required for a very short time to live in villages, separate from Europeans. There were at least eleven on the Bendigo goldfield. The Chinese miners continued to practise their culture. There were houses of worship for example, there were market gardens, there were doctors, there were barbers, there were places of entertainment, the hotels, gambling places, restaurants, there are descriptions of these places in local newspapers, and we can gather from that that living in community, the Chinese miners, although they were almost all men, continued to practise their culture, and that was an essential survival mechanism for them in this foreign community.

Matt Smith

How many families later on came over to join these men?

Valerie Lovejoy

Very few came to join the men. What tended to happen was that some men married European women and settled down and had families. Other cohabited with European women and others lived in community with men. There were very few Chinese women and Chinese families in Bendigo. One that's well known in Bendigo is the O'Hoy family, Dennis O'Hoy who still lives in Bendigo had a Chinese mother and a Chinese father. But that's an unusual situation in Bendigo, and I think the reason for that is that Chinese settlement was very actively discouraged by the Victorian government. They were penalised with legislation, a ten pound landing fee and higher fees for protection than the European miners had. Very unfair legislative measures were taken to deliberately discourage Chinese migration and I think that's the reason there was no large scale influx of Chinese families. The atmosphere was very discouraging from an official perspective. Despite that, a lot of people stayed – those who married Europeans had families and their children continue to live in places like Bendigo today.

Matt Smith

So when you were studying this, what sort of sources did you have to draw from?

Valerie Lovejoy

Well, I was able to draw on a lot of Victorian government records, particularly under the period of the protectorate which lasted from 1855 to … it sort of petered out in about 1862. It was quite ineffective from 1858 onwards but nevertheless the protectors of the goldfields had to submit a weekly return of all the Chinese in their district. So you found out things like how many Chinese people were living in a particular district, it mostly applied to the miners, so what sorts of machines they were working with, where they were living on the goldfields, all of those sorts of statistical details were incorporated in these weekly reports. So they were a fantastic source. Also there were court records, so when a Chinese person came to the attention of the courts, there are records of those in the court cases and they were also reported in the newspapers.

Matt Smith

Did you find anything that told you the Chinese side of the story or something with their own voice?

Valerie Lovejoy

That is a really difficult thing with 19th century history, but nevertheless I did find some good stuff. Now inquests are a great resource because an inquest requires a witness to tell the story in his or her own words, so inquests on Chinese miners' deaths, frequently there would be a relative or a friend there, telling the story of what happened at that moment in time when the person died. And although that story was told through an interpreter, you still get a personal story of what was happening at the time. And it's those sorts of personal stories that really challenge some of the ideas that we had about the Chinese migrants and their relationships with Europeans in the community. There is one surviving manuscript that is a wonderful resource in Victoria and it's a diary by a miner called John Ah Sing who lived in Dunolly. I think it was written in about 1880. But he was accused of assaulting his fellow countrymen and then through the court cases considered to be insane and incarcerated in the Kew Lunatic Asylum, and afterwards went to Yarra Bend where he lived for the rest of his life. But while he was there he wrote this story, his account of what happened and why he was wrongfully arrested and in between the lines of his story, you get a very good idea of his living conditions, his relationships both with his countrymen and with Europeans, and his treatment by doctors, police and lawyers and so on. That little diary is in the State Library of Victoria and it's invaluable, almost the only record that we have in 19th century Victoria that's of a really personal nature. What I hope that I was able to do was tell as story that challenged some of the very thin ideas that we've had about Chinese migration in 19th century in the past, and I think that through the sources that I was able to access, I could provide a window into the lives and sort of show something of the experience of these Chinese miners. And I tried to tell stories wherever I could to put that personal accent on the history.

Matt Smith

Can you tell me one of your stories that you find quite notable?

Valerie Lovejoy

I might tell you the story of Yick Yung. Now that's an inquest that I came across. Yick Yung was a storekeeper in Dunolly, in fact he was a butcher. And he seems to have left Dunolly with a great deal of money owing to him and came to Bendigo and ended up becoming a miner, I think it was in the early 1870s, probably driven to that from desperation. It obviously didn't work out for him. The inquest records contains two suicide notes because he committed suicide in 1874. One was to his nephew and one was to a former business partner. They're quite tantalising because we don't know the full story. He says in the letters that he'd received some bad news from China and it required him obviously to make some sort of financial reparation to his family to fulfil a debt that he had in China. He was unable to do it because he didn't have money, so he went to Dunolly to try and extract the money from people who owed him money. He wasn't successful in getting the money and he wasn't making money in Bendigo, and he therefore took a really large dose of opium, he wasn't an opium addict but he bought opium and he committed suicide. And his advice to his nephew who lived on the field with him, try and find some gold and go home to China as soon as you can, because he felt that he'd had no success in this country and he'd lost face by not being able to provide for his family in China and this was the honourable way out of his situation. And he wrote a letter of advice also to his business partner who may in fact have been the one who owed him the money, but it's not specified in the letter, to give up gambling, get his act together, and try and return to China. Although the personal stories can be quite sad, they do give us a very strong inkling into the mindset of the people who are working in Bendigo.

Matt Smith

What evidence is there today of Bendigo's Chinese heritage?

Valerie Lovejoy

There's a lot of evidence if people are willing to go and look for it. Now, I think if people came to a place like Bendigo, what they'd do is go to the Chinese Museum, and it's a good starting point. The Chinese Museum is in Bridge Street and it's actually built of the site of the Chinese business centre if you like, of Bendigo in the 19th century. There were a lot of Chinese storekeepers situated along that street and it's a celebration of Chinese culture. So what people see when they go there are family stories – they also see the dragon and the glorious regalia that was brought out from China to celebrate the Bendigo Easter procession as a contribution from the Chinese to the hospitals in Bendigo. And that history is all there, that heritage is there. But there are other places in Bendigo that people often don't go to, and they're equally significant. One site is the Joss House, the temple. There is a remaining temple which is on the edge of what was the Ironbark Chinese Village, the main Chinese village in Bendigo. It's all gone now, but the temple remains, built probably in 1859 or 1860 – quite early anyway. I think the oldest Chinese temple in regional Australia. Now it's not just a house of history, it's actually being used as a house of worship today, but it's a link back to those times. So, fourth and fifth generation Chinese could come to Bendigo, and they could indeed be walking in a place where their ancestors once trod. Directly across the road from the Chinese temple, there's an old Chinese market garden. Very few signs remain there now of what it was except for a few old fruit trees, but recently it's been discovered in the grounds of that market garden a brick-making kiln. Now that kiln hasn't been fully excavated. It awaits further funding. But what has been found – this is a traditionally Chinese constructed kiln and Chinese brickmakers in Bendigo as early as 1859 were making bricks for buildings in Bendigo which were in direct competition with European brickmakers at the time. That gives you a more complex picture. You haven't just got Chinese goldminers, you've got Chinese market gardeners, you've got Chinese brickmakers, and if you walk a little further on towards northern Bendigo for example, you come across the White Hills Cemetery. And there there are something like 240 gravestones that are the Chinese who are buried in the White Hills Cemetery. That's what remains. So we have those reminders that are there in our community but I don't think people tend to walk around these other places of interest. The other thing that we have – the families. That's really our biggest reminder. We have Chinese Australian families living in Bendigo today – there are at least thirty families that directly trace their ancestry to these early times and there are many others, Joan Jack now deceased, but who was a marvellous volunteer and creator of the Chinese Museum. Joan's estimated that something like up to 25% of Bendigo people have some Chinese ancestry. Now that might be an exaggeration but there are probably many people in Bendigo who have links to Chinese ancestors who are not really aware of them. So we've got the living heritage in the people who are here, as well.

Matt Smith

Dr Valerie Lovejoy there. If you have any questions, comments or feedback from this podcast, or any other, then send us an email at podcast@latrobe.edu.au.