Life in the early decades of the colony of Victoria were not easy. While the discovery of gold sounded very exciting and lured many people to come to Victoria to seek their fortune, most people found mining to be less profitable than they had imagined.

Eventually and inevitably alluvial gold petered out, mining companies took over and the numbers of Chinese miners dropped away rapidly as they started to drift to the cities to work in industry and commerce. Some gave up, others plodded on and others sought alternative employment in the cities or on the land.

At first, it was not easy to purchase land and start farming. Even when more land became available from the 1860s, settlers found the best land near rivers and other waterways had already been taken by squatters and earlier selectors. Work was not always easy to find and in the 1890s the depression made it very tough for people. There were none of the unemployment, social security or hospital and medical benefits that exist today.

Many moved into New South Wales which in 1861 introduced its own restrictive legislation, but others returned to China. Nevertheless, many pockets of permanent Chinese residents remained and Melbourne, Bendigo, Beechworth and other towns had their own Chinatowns. In the first half of the 1860s the Victorian government removed its anti-Chinese legislation, but the sentiment which had created it was still firmly entrenched in the Community.

By 1881 there were 1,057 Chinese in Melbourne, and in 1891 the Chinese population in Melbourne had almost doubled to 2,143. By 1901 Chinese communities on the goldfields had all but disintegrated. In Melbourne the Chinese community was centred in Little Bourke Street and in Victoria the Chinese population numbered 7,349 of which 2,200 resided in Melbourne and suburbs. A substantial number of Chinese immigrants settled in the Bendigo district and to this day Bendigo is a centre for Chinese heritage and culture.

Many of the stories of these early settlers are stories of hardship in an unknown environment. People often had to find other ways to make a living. Unions to protect the rights of workers were a recent idea, though the Eight Hour Day (1856) had brought better working hours and conditions for some. The idea of a ‘basic wage’ or ‘minimum wage’ was still many years away from being realized (Harvester Judgment, 1905).

Except for business contacts there was little social and cultural intercourse between the Chinese and Australians. Former Australian hostility derived from unpleasant conflicts in the early Chinese settlement on the goldfields remained. New ill-feeling was enhanced by ‘Chinese competition’ in cabinet making and laundry trades.

The records often provide a sense of the social and economic situations that made it difficult for ex-prisoners to break away from their criminal lives. Sometimes you need ‘to read between the lines’ or to make connections between different facts and ideas in different parts of the text to understand this. Some Chinese prisoners were old and without family members to lend support. Many were forced into criminal activity by difficult circumstances. It was not uncommon, before the days of government welfare, especially during the depression of the 1890s, for individuals to commit crimes in order to receive the food and shelter provided in prison.

Racist attitudes at the time also made it difficult for the Chinese seeking work and acceptance in the community. During the 1880s and 1890s many Australians were becoming very patriotic about Australia. And they often saw Australia as a place for European Australians only. There were calls to restrict the number of Chinese entering the colonies. Henry Lawson wrote a short story, Ah Soon in 1911 that expressed similar ideas although he was prepared to accept individual Chinese as valuable and trustworthy members of the community. At the beginning of this story Lawson declares, ‘I am anti-Chinese as far as Australia is concerned; in fact, I am all for a White Australia.’ While Lawson’s attitudes soften as the story unfolds, it helps to illustrate an important aspect of the hardship that many Chinese experienced at this time and indeed earlier.

The following information about the Chinese and the law and the post-1900 immigration restrictions against the Chinese provide us with further evidence of the difficulties these people often faced.

Chinese and the Law in the Colony of Victoria

From the time of their arrival in Victoria in the 1850s, the Chinese met with racism and misunderstanding. Their presence in large numbers on the goldfields provoked a great deal of resentment and unrest as a result of racist and economic anxieties.

The government introduced a number of discriminatory laws in an attempt to restrict Chinese immigration into Victoria. In June 1855, the Legislative Council imposed an entry tax on all Chinese entering the colony. This law caused some Chinese to avoid Victorian ports, disembark in South Australia instead, and walk across to the Victorian goldfields. In 1857 a six pound residential fee on Chinese residents was introduced. This measure resulted in petitions from the Chinese communities demanding protection and justice.

The Chinese also experienced discrimination and misunderstandings when dealing with the Victorian legal system generally. Many difficulties resulted from the lack of Chinese interpreters in the courts. The few interpreters available sometimes spoke a different dialect from the person on trial. Despite this, the courts did attempt to incorporate Chinese customs and beliefs into their legal procedures.

Post 1900 restrictions on the Chinese

The State and new Federal authorities imposed further restrictions on the Chinese. Immigration restrictions prevented them from bringing other Chinese to Australia, naturalization laws disallowed them from taking out citizenship and in the Factories and Shops Legislation, special clauses were included to deal with the Chinese in particular. It is little wonder that in this environment the Chinese isolated themselves and slowed down the process of any assimilation. By 1901 the Chinese community in Melbourne thrived only in isolation within the Australian community.

Not withstanding the immigration restrictions of the 19th and 20th centuries, a trade in illegal immigrants flourished - and still does.

Most illegal migrants were financed by the Australian Chinese who wished to bring out friends and relatives or to recruit fresh labour for their gardens, shops and factories. As Chinese labourers could not be obtained through legal procedures, some Australian Chinese residents risked illegal means. Other illegal traffic was organised by Chinese merchants in Hong Kong who regarded it as a profitable business. The illegal traffic frequently annoyed the Government and hardened its attitude towards immigrant Chinese.

The illegal migrants suffered unimaginably severe hardships. Some hid underneath deck cargo, in coal bunkers, or in rice bins for the whole trip without seeing daylight. Other unfortunates died by suffocation and their bodies were thrown into the sea, without reaching the shores of the "New Goldfields". In many cases, stowaways were discovered, then imprisoned and deported.

It was not until after the Second World War and the easing of the White Australia Policy that Chinese immigrants were allowed to settle as naturalized citizens.

The Chinese who remained after the gold rush, who established market gardens, opened stores, eating houses and laundries, and who became merchants or cabinet makers or labourers, have contributed substantially to our rich and diverse cultural heritage. Since that time the areas of life in Australia to which the Chinese have contributed has broadened to include all areas of activity in Australian society – education, science, industry, medicine, public or civic life, the arts, sports and so on.

We should be thankful that many of the Chinese miners overcame the hostility and intolerance to which they were subjected, and that despite policies designed to drive them from our shores, many remained.

Activities

• Ask four class mates to join you to form a group. Each read the text about ONE of the following men: Charlie Fun Chung, Wee Cow, Ah Toy, Wing Shing Yook, and Ah Cheong. When you have done this, share what you have learnt with others in your group.
• List the types of crimes that were committed.
• Identify the main causes of these crimes.
• Search for any evidence that life for any of these people was difficult and if so, indicate how.
• Find any examples you can of the ways in which the Victorian courts tried to take into account practices and ideas from Chinese culture.
• Read some of the other texts about Chinese prisoners to find further evidence for each of the four tasks you undertook in the previous activity.
• Make general statements about the Chinese and the law and the way they tried to resolve disputes.
• Which of these Chinese prisoners do you think was treated the most fairly, and which the most unfairly. Use evidence to support your view point.

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