There was a lot of agitation amongst the miners at this time to begin with. The Red Ribbon Rebellion and the Eureka Stockade were in and respectively and the arrival of so many Chinese added to the tension. Chinese men were seen as yet another problem by both miners and government.
Some in parliament argued that it was a security risk to have so many Chinese in the colony who were ' The Royal Commission after the Eureka stockade also looked into the Chinese situation as another one of the miner's grievances. In the Victorian parliament passed the Immigration Restriction Act in an effort to restrict Chinese immigration.
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It also mandated that there could only be a certain number of Chinese travellers per tonnage of shipping. This put a dent in the ship masters coffers. Cost of passage was already high. This Act did appear to limit the numbers of Chinese arriving in Victorian ports. Official Victorian records show over 10, Chinese arriving in Victoria between and but only a few hundred in the next two years. However, numbers of Chinese on the Victorian goldfields continued to swell through overland routes.
To avoid this Act, many ships travelled to South Australia. In fact thanks to these migrants the town of Robe's population doubled overnight and it developed into the main port of call for Chinese arriving in Australia. It was then a long overland route to the Victorian goldfields. It is unknown exactly how many Chinese made it to the goldfields in this way but estimates are usually in the thousands. Parties of Chinese men would often pay for local guides to take them to the goldfields.
Sometimes, these guides would abandon the Chinese in the bush in order to return to Robe and get the money from another group and do the same thing. However, as more and more Chinese undertook this journey it became an easier more organized exercise and chances for these sort of hustles diminished. Along the way Chinese sojourners established wells and paths through the bush. Many Chinese marks and developments can still be found along this route today.
After finally arriving on the goldfields the hardships the Chinese faced continued. There was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment amongst the European miners. In July in the Bendigo Advertiser it was reported that William Denovan called for an uprising for the purpose of 'the driving of the Chinese population off the Bendigo goldfield'.
However, This sort of sentiment was widespread throughout the Australian gold rushes. In this sentiment caused the Buckland Riot and in the Lambing Flat riots. There was also unrest around Ararat when a party of Chinese men were the first to discover gold there and kept the find quiet. In answer to these problems the parliament of Victoria installed Chinese protectors in It was the task of these officers to organize the Chinese and liaise between them and local authorities.
It was a system of segregation but one in which the subject of the segregation, the Chinese, were often appreciative of. Places without these protectors and an organized hierarchy were the places where anti-Chinese sentiment boiled over into riots and violence in Bucklands and Lambing Flats. So in this sense the policy could be regarded as a success. It seemed to the Chinese just like a continuation of the mining licenses policy. Around most of the goldfields of Victoria the Chinese were organized into these camps.
The camps were the forerunners to later Chinatowns in many places. In the Bendigo protectorate there were seven different camps for the Chinese in the area and six in Ballarat. While most of the men were from the Guangdong province, several different dialects of the Chinese language were present on the goldfields.
These camps were their own little communities. The parties of men who left China did so as organized groups, with specific roles spelled out, including barber, scribe, herbalist, etc.
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Once they arrived on the goldfields, they were able to take up these roles. There is evidence that the Chinese even used their own currency in these places. To the Europeans these were notorious and exotic places. At the same time in China, opium addiction was rampant, some of the men brought this addiction with them to the goldfields.
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Two of the most common finds by modern fossickers in the area of Chinese camps are Chinese coins and Opium pipes. However, the records of local health groups and hospitals show only low numbers of Chinese were ever treated for their opium addictions. Amongst the defining moments on the goldfields, the Red Ribbon Rebellion, the Eureka Stockade, the Chinese in Bendigo had what could be described as a defining moment for the Chinese in Australia.
In over 3, Chinese men met on the site of what is now Bendigo's Rosalind Park. This meeting was to contest and denounce the many discriminatory laws the Victorian government had enacted. A petition was sent to Melbourne with around 5, names on it. It has later been found that some of those names are actually fake names or joke names.
After the Gold rushes in Victoria, some Chinese moved into the other colonies to follow gold rushes there. This could be seen as a cause for the Lambing Flats Riots and then later the same problems were found on the Palmer River goldfields in the late s where Chinese miners vastly outnumbered Europeans. As soon as the Chinese started arriving in Australia, they started dying here. Many wanted their remains to be sent back to China for spiritual and traditional reasons. Many families went to great lengths to see this achieved.
Others however, were buried in Australia. Cemeteries around the country contain Chinese graves. To accommodate the Chinese funeral rituals that involve burning cemeteries around Australia allowed the construction of chimneys. These chimneys can still be found in cemeteries around the country today. Often the people in charge of the cemeteries were devout Christians, people who had an aversion to what they saw as pagan rituals. This meant that no such chimneys were built until the s after several grass fires had burnt through Australian cemeteries. The Chinese section of the White Hills cemetery in Bendigo is possibly the most important example remaining in Australia of Chinese graves in their original state.
Beechworth Cemetery, which opened in , is significant for the way in which it incorporates a Chinese section into the original cemetery plan. After the Victorian and NSW gold rushes of the s and s the numbers of Chinese in those colonies declined significantly. Colonies of Australia occurred in in the far north of Queensland at the Palmer River , after the discovery of gold there was another rush and by there were 20, Chinese there. The conditions and problems there were both similar to those in Victoria but also conditions were more extreme.
The Chinese and European miners also had to deal with attacks from hostile Australian Aboriginal tribes. Many Chinese stayed in Queensland and worked hard to establish much of the northern banana trade. In the s there was also a rise in anti-Chinese sentiment in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Earlier discontent had been curtailed by the segregationist policies in the rural protectorates and poorly reported in the urban publications.
However, as more and more Chinese began moving from the country towns into the cities there was an equal rise in anti-Chinese sentiment. This resulted in another round of restrictive Acts in NSW in and It also contributed to a rising drive for Federation of Australia. One of the most compelling arguments for federation amongst the public and politicians of the time was that a united immigration policy would secure the borders of all the Australian colonies.
The Chinese 'pest' or 'menace' was the root of these immigration fears. Mining remained one of the biggest industries for Chinese in Australia but it was becoming more of a risky endeavor as the alluvial fields petered out. Chinese in the country towns either established themselves in other industries there or moved to the cities. Many of those opened stores and became merchants and hawkers. In in NSW alone there were nearly shops owned and run by the Chinese. Fishing and fish curing industries were operating in Melbourne and north and south of Sydney in the s, s and s.
By the s Chinese people in Australia were represented in a wide variety of occupations including scrub cutters, interpreters , cooks , tobacco farmers, launderers, market gardeners, cabinet-makers , storekeepers and drapers , though by this time the Chinese operated fishing industry seems to have disappeared. In this period Sydney and Melbourne's proportion of the Chinese residents of Australia had steadily increased.
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During this period, furniture making became one of the largest industries for Chinese in Melbourne. At the height of this industry in Melbourne there were firms, producing and selling Chinese made furniture. Furniture makers of European descent petitioned the government, saying Chinese furniture makers were hurting their livelihoods. At the same time Victoria had a massive economic downturn in the s. Because of the combination of these issues, soon after the turn of the century, there were no more Chinese employed in this industry.
By the time of Australian Federation, there were around 29, ethnic Chinese in Australia: There were also many Chinese still working in the north of Queensland in the banana trade. Tin mining in Tasmania was also a venture that lured Chinese workers to the state. They were also part of an international community involved in political events in China such as sending delegates to a Peking Parliament or making donations at times of natural disaster.
The passing of the Immigration Restriction Act of , however, froze the Chinese communities of the late 19th century into a slow decline. Thanks to Australian Chinese newspapers like the Tung Wah Times and the Chinese Times which were distributed to Chinese communities all over Australia and thanks to the many clan societies, the Chinese Australians were a rather united group.
In spite of the geographical distances. This can be seen by the colourful debates that went on within the community over the future of China. Some in Australia and notably the Tung Wah Times believed China should keep a monarchy and they supported reform. Others believed China needed a republic and they supported Sun Yat-sen. Chinese regalia travelled around the country to be used by communities for Chinese new year and local events.
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