Gold graves and glory

by Jackie French

  Joss houses were red, the colour of good fortune, with a curved roof and guardian animals near the doorway to scare off evil spirits and usually with ‘tree of heaven’ planted around them. ‘Tree of heaven’ is a tall, broad tree that spreads by suckering—new plants spring up all along its roots. It is now a major weed in many old gold mining areas.

  WHY WERE THE CHINESE HATED?

  Nearly all settlers in Australia at that time were British, Christian and spoke English. The Chinese were none of these. Even the diggers who weren’t British looked as though they might be. Very few diggers or settlers had much education either, or experience with other cultures.

  The Chinese also enjoyed a hot wash at night—unlike most of the European miners!

  Unlike most of the other newcomers, the Chinese mostly worked and travelled as a group, often a hundred or more, which made them more obvious—and more feared.

  And the Chinese didn’t wear the same clothes as other miners. They usually had their hair in long plaits or pigtails.

  They were simply … different. And often that was enough to make other people scared of them.

  There was a lot of them and it’s true that they were envied because of their mining expertise. The Chinese were Confucian, Taoist or Buddhist, and the Europeans couldn’t understand the way they worshipped.

  Indian diggers on the goldfields were also often abused and attacked.

  But mostly the Chinese were hated because European people in those days often thought that any other race or religion was inferior to theirs, and here in the colonies were these strange people doing even better than they were.

  Chinese societies like the Sze Yap tried to help their members fit in with the other races around them. Sometimes, neighbours and employers admired their hard work and honesty, and Chinese and Europeans became friends. But too often the Chinese were seen as alien, inferior and potential enemies.

  The Chinese were also blamed for outbreaks of disease, when it had nothing to do with them.

  STOPPING THE NATION

  The Chinese were criticised for smoking opium (even though alcohol was a bigger problem in the rest of the community) and for gambling games like fan tan—though other diggers gambled heavily on card games and horse racing.

  The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861—and over the next century and a half it wasn’t a Chinese game that would ‘stop the nation’!

  The Chinese would work for lower wages than most Europeans.

  But there was one area where the Chinese were not only allowed to work—they were valued and respected. And that was vegetable growing. Often the Chinese were the only people who could coax fresh vegies and fruit to thrive in the hot, dry mining country.

  KEEP THEM OUT!

  The miners wanted no Chinese in Australia at all—and sent many petitions to the government asking that they be kept out legally.

  Not everyone felt this way. Many squatters and farmers said the Chinese were peaceful and valuable colonists.

  But the miners won.

  The first anti-Chinese legislation was the Chinese Immigration Act passed in April 1855 in Victoria, partly as a result of the Gold Fields Royal Commission set up after the Eureka Stockade to look into conditions on the goldfields. (The USA and Canada later passed similar laws.)

  Every Chinese migrant who landed at a Victorian port had to pay £10, and ships were only allowed to carry one Chinese person for every ten tons of cargo.

  The money was supposed to be used to help protect the Chinese from attacks by Europeans. Every Chinese person could be taxed, too, to pay for Protectors on each goldfield who’d make sure the Chinese stayed in their own camps. The Protectors could also settle disputes and ‘control hygiene’—which gave them a lot of power.

  It didn’t work. The Chinese landed in South Australia and New South Wales instead, and walked to the diggings.

  THE LONG WALK FROM ROBE

  Many Chinese diggers landed at Robe in South Australia. It was closer than Adelaide was to the Ballarat and Bendigo goldfields.

  The first ship to land Chinese gold seekers at Robe was the Scottish ship the Land of Cakes. It had 264 Chinese migrants on board.

  People in Robe mostly made money from exporting wool. Now they could make money in other ways. They charged the Chinese four or five shillings to ferry them from the ship to the land, sold them food, shovels and other tools for mining, and provided guides to show them the way overland to the central Victorian goldfields of Ararat, Ballarat, Castlemaine and Bendigo.

  At one time there were about 3000 Chinese miners in Robe—so many that the locals were scared and 25 soldiers were sent to help. But the Chinese were peaceful and obeyed the law and the soldiers weren’t needed.

  Then the long walk began.

  The young men walked about 20 miles each day, in groups of up to 700, all in single file, with a pole across their shoulders and a basket at each end of it.

  They dug wells for fresh water and bought sheep from the farmers for fresh meat, as well as fruit and vegetables when they could. They left messages in the towns for their countrymen as they passed, telling them where they might find food or water on the journey.

  They also carved Chinese characters on trees, showing which way to go and giving other advice. Some of these can still be seen faintly today.

  Sometimes their guides were crooks. They took the Chinese miners’ money, then left them stranded in the outback after a couple of days.

  In 1857 the Chinese Immigration Act was repealed, then reinstated when the diggers made a fuss.

  Even the honest guides wouldn’t stay with them all the way to the diggings—they were too afraid of violence from the European miners.

  THE RACISTS BECOME VIOLENT

  One of the first organised violent attempts to get rid of the Chinese miners started in Bendigo in 1854. The cry of ‘Roll up, roll up!’ went out and a mob got together and decided that all other diggers should join forces to get the Chinese off the goldfields.

  But the local constables acted quickly and told the miners they’d be in trouble if they took any further action.

  Things calmed down … for a while.

  THE BUCKLAND RIVER RIOT

  There were fights between Chinese and other miners on the Victorian goldfields all through the first months of 1857. Finally, on 4 July, the non-Chinese miners of the Buckland River diggings met and determined to destroy the Chinese. At first a small group rampaged into the Chinese camp, tearing down tents and yelling for the Chinese to leave the goldfields.

  More miners arrived—and suddenly things were out of control. They beat and robbed the Chinese, as well as the European wife of a Chinese miner, who was nearly killed.

  One digger cut off a Chinese miner’s finger just to steal his gold ring.

  Tents and joss houses were burned.

  More than 2500 Chinese miners fled, either into the bush or across the river, where sympathetic European miners and farmers sheltered and protected them. But at least three Chinese miners died of exposure and another may have drowned.

  The Victorian government gave the Chinese miners compensation and police protection so they could come back to the diggings, as well as a Chinese Protector to supervise the way they were being treated. Special Chinese camps were selected, away from the rioters.

  Some of the rioters were arrested. However, all but four were let off, as the juñes said their anger and actions were justified.

  But things were to get worse—and soon the law, too, would discriminate against the Chinese.

  TROUBLE AT ARARAT

  The Chinese miners were the first onto the Ararat goldfield in 1857, so they were able to get in before the European miners and claim the best diggings.

  There was a rush to the new gold strike—and growing anger that the Chinese had the best spots. So many people arrived in such a short time that there weren’t enough police and licence inspectors to keep things under control.

  All through May trouble flared. And the
n, as at Buckland River, events quickly spiralled out of control. A quarrel at a Chinese store led to a small group attacking the Chinese camp dwellers with mining timber and axe handles.

  The riot finally died down. But a rumour started that the government was going to take all the claims away from the Chinese. Several Chinese claims were seized by European miners.

  The Chinese Protector stepped in and said that the rumour wasn’t true.

  The Victorian government acted again—but this time to force the Chinese out. They passed a law that all Chinese had to buy a Residence Ticket. If they didn’t have one, they couldn’t get their claim back when someone took it.

  But hardly any Chinese spoke good English, or even knew that the law had been passed. So almost none of them bought the tickets.

  On 3 February 1858, a mob of European diggers demanded to see the tickets. When the Chinese couldn’t show them, the other diggers stole about sixty of the best claims on the Ararat goldfield, worth over £1000 pounds each.

  The Chinese were forced out.

  There was another inquiry. But this time all the Chinese got was permission to sell their mining equipment and the timber used in their mines for a few shillings.

  LAMBING FLAT

  All through the 1850s Victoria had the richest goldfields in Australia, but by 1860 most of the gold was gone.

  A rumour went around the mining camps that the Chinese were to blame—they’d used what people saw as their ‘cunning oriental mining techniques’ to sneak out all the gold.

  Of course it wasn’t true. The surface gold in Victoria had simply been discovered and taken out. But most of the miners were uneducated and racist. They were broke, desperate and they wanted someone to blame.

  European miners formed the Miners’ Protective League, to get rid of Chinese miners. In 1860 and 1861 there were several ‘roll ups’ on the New South Wales goldfields—mobs of miners rioting in the Chinese camps to try to drive the Chinese miners away.

  But the Chinese stayed. Then gold was discovered at Lambing Flat (now called Young) in New South Wales in 1860. Almost 15 000 diggers of many nationalities rushed there in a year.

  By now a lot of the early would-be miners had given up looking for gold and got jobs on farms instead—and the successful miners were still working their old claims. There were a lot more criminals and ex-convicts among the new miners at Lambing Flat than there had been on the earlier goldfields … poor, ignorant, angry and violent.

  In February 1861 there was yet another ‘roll up’ that ended with a white mob invading the Chinese camp at Lambing Flat and forcing 1500 Chinese miners to flee. The police gained control again and the Chinese came back.

  But it was only a temporary peace.

  On 30 June 1861, despite the mid-winter mud and frost, Lambing Flat had the biggest, best-organised ‘roll up’ yet. A brass band played as 2000 to 3000 European diggers marched to the Chinese camp, with frenzied chanting and singing and waving anti-Chinese banners.

  As soon as they got near the camp the marchers turned into a mob—screaming, yelling, whipping the Chinese miners, beating them senseless, even cutting their pigtails (or trying to pull them out by the roots) and waving them in triumph on the poles of their banners.

  Some Chinese miners tried to shelter in their mineshafts, but they were buried alive. Over 1000 fled into the bush. More than 500 were badly hurt.

  After that every tent was robbed of any gold or other precious possession. Then the tents were burnt.

  It all took only two hours.

  The camp was a smouldering ruin—deserted, except by those who were too badly hurt to move.

  Local farmer James Roberts and his family looked after many of the escaping Chinese miners for weeks.

  Women and children joined in the Lambing Flat riot, stealing and burning like the men.

  There just weren’t enough police to stop the riot. But after it was all over the police arrested three of the rioters.

  Three thousand angry miners stormed over to the police camp, and demanded that their friends be released. The police refused—and the miners opened fire.

  The police fired back, while mounted troops gathered and made a surprise attack.

  The mob was beaten back, but the police knew they’d return. They snuck away during the night, leaving the prisoners behind … and when the mob came back they let the prisoners go.

  More police arrived a few days later. Things calmed down, but the anger remained.

  In 1861, after Lambing Flat, the New South Wales government passed even stronger laws than Victoria had. These laws prevented Chinese from ever becoming Australian citizens.

  But no-one was happy!

  The diggers wanted laws to keep the Chinese out altogether. The farmers and squatters wanted more Chinese. Like many other people, they thought that the Chinese could bring valuable knowledge and skills to Australia and should be encouraged to settle here.

  Others, including Henry Parkes (who was later to do more than anyone else to bring the separate colonies together as one nation) wanted the Chinese kept away simply because their presence stirred up the miners and the mobs—not because he didn’t like them.

  The real problem wasn’t the Chinese—it was the fact that Australian settlers were mostly uneducated and knew nothing about Chinese people or culture. Their ignorance became fear.

  And that ignorance would cause problems in Australia for at least the next hundred years.

  THE PROBLEM EASES

  Nearly all the Chinese diggers went back to China when they had paid their debts and made some money for themselves. Between 1852 and 1889, about 40 000 Chinese diggers arrived and about 36 000 left.

  There just weren’t enough Chinese to frighten the racists anymore—or not much. (Many Australians still wanted Chinese people kept out in case they worked for lower wages—and simply because they were different, too.)

  The remaining Chinese worked for squatters and pastoralists, or tended market gardens. Life would have been much harder in many outback towns without the vegetables from the Chinese gardens. They also started businesses in the towns and cities, importing cloth, tea and spices from China, running general stores, timber supply yards and other businesses, sometimes living in the areas that were called ‘Chinatown’.

  Some married European or Indigenous women, and within a few generations in some families they had almost forgotten that great-grandpa had come from China, instead of Ireland or Prussia. Other families kept their pride in their Chinese links, and the men brought brides to Australia from China—and so did their sons and grandsons.

  QUONG TART

  But even during the worst of the riots and anti-Chinese feeling, some men became part of both the European and Chinese communities—and were loved by both.

  Mei Quong Tart was the son of a merchant, who lived in a small town southwest of Canton (Guangzhou). In 1859, when Quong Tart was nine, he was brought to Australia to work for his uncle on the Bells Creek goldfields near Braidwood in New South Wales.

  Quong Tart was a bright kid—and he already knew how to read and write in Chinese, unlike many of his countrymen who came to Australia.

  Quong Tart’s uncle made him work in a store owned by a Scot, Thomas Forsythe. Soon Quong Tart spoke excellent English—with a Scots accent. A Scottish customer heard his accent and was impressed by his intelligence.

  She was Mrs Alice Simpson and she and her husband adopted Quong Tart. Percy Simpson employed 200 Chinese workers in his mine and Quong Tart worked as his interpreter. Percy gave Quong Tart his own gold claim when he was 14.

  It was a good one—and suddenly Quong Tart was rich!

  Quong Tart was made an Australian citizen when he was 21. He was handsome, loved cricket, horse racing, dances and was incredibly popular—even while other Chinese people in the area were being attacked and insulted.

  Quong Tart loved all things Scottish. He often wore a kilt, danced the highland fling and recited the poetry of Robbie Burns.

&
nbsp; He was hard-working and had a good business head. When the alluvial gold began to get scarce, he used machines to crush quartz and extract the gold, working in partnership with Percy Simpson.

  When he was 31, Quong Tart went back to visit his parents in China. They wanted to arrange a marriage for him, but he refused. However, he did arrange for his brother to start a merchant business in Sydney, selling Chinese tea.

  After three months he sailed back home—and for him that was definitely Australia.

  Soon he’d turned his brother’s shop into Sydney’s most popular tearooms, which were particularly popular with well-bred, fashionable ladies.

  Quong Tart went back to Braidwood, near Bells Creek, to visit his old friends, and there he fell in love with English-born Margaret Scarlett, a teacher. They married and had six kids.

  By now Quong Tart was seen by both the Chinese and European communities as a sort of ambassador. He went all around New South Wales, helping to settle disputes and trying to work out ways the two cultures could live together. The Chinese government made him a Mandarin of the Crystal Button, which was a bit like giving him an English knighthood.

  But in 1802 a burglar hit him on the head with an iron bar. He died the following year, aged 53.

  Quong Tart also worked to stop the Chinese people using opium.

  Fifteen hundred people attended his funeral.

  CHAPTER 7

  BUSHRANGERS AND SELECTORS

  First there was the gold, dug up far away from the cities in the bush. Then there were all the ex-convicts, escaped convicts, ticket of leave men, or just adventurers dreaming of gold, but not prepared to work for it.