Work | Leaving & staying | Leisure | Beliefs | Dress | Food

Work

Subthemes: 
gold & tin | pastoral work | market gardens | herbalists | cooks | dressmaking | storekeeping | carpenters

Gold & tin

Large numbers of Chinese miners joined the gold and tin rushes in different parts of the state during the second half of the nineteenth century. It was back breaking work. Some were successful. For many, however, searching for gold was like 'trying to catch the moon at the bottom of the sea'. Many also experienced the anti-Chinese hostility of European miners.

An unidentified Chinese miner testing wash for tin, Great Britain Mine, Emmaville, 1899.(Private collection)

This photograph was one of twelve taken by photographer and mining agent, Robert Newby Kirk who was the Sydney representative for the Great Britain Mining Company. It was presented to the mine’s manager, Sandy McGillivray, following Kirk’s visit to Emmaville. By 1899 tin mining in the Emmaville district had passed its peak and the number of Chinese had dropped from around 1200 to 200. The posed photograph was a conscious commemoration of the Chinese role in tin mining.

Weighing scales, late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. (Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga)

Scales like these were used for weighing small amounts of gold, medicinal herbs, or opium. Quite often an auspicious saying or the owner's name was inscribed on the outer casing. The Cantonese transliteration of the Chinese characters on these scales is 'Wong Chung Hing';, and probably refers to an owner of the scales.

Banner flown at the anti-Chinese riots on the Lambing Flat Goldfields in 1860/1861. (Young Museum)

Chinese on the goldfields were often the targets of racist attitudes and sometimes violence. They were criticised for their work habits and their cultural differences. They were seen as a threat to the livelihoods and racial purity of European Australians. Some of these sentiments were captured in the 1861 Prospectus of the Lambing Flat Miner’s Protective League which declared;

... the present desolate and insolvent state of the old goldfields of the colony is solely due to the admission of such overwhelming numbers of this abominable race into the country ... Mongolian[s] have forced us to fly with our wives and families from all other diggings in the country until we are obliged to turn at bay upon this our last resting-place – our only hope of obtaining a homestead - and drive the moon-faced barbarians away.

The riots at Lambing Flat finally triggered the New South Wales colonial government to pass its first piece of legislation to restrict the entry of Chinese immigrants into the colony.