In the 1850s tens of thousands of Chinese people flocked to Victoria, joining people from nations around the world who came here chasing the lure of gold. Fleeing violence, famine and poverty in their homeland Chinese goldseekers sought fortune for their families in the place they called 'New Gold Mountain'.
The 1850s gold rush attracted many Chinese people to Australia in search of fortune. In this scene, diggers methodically search for gold using various devices and techniques.
Chinese miners arrived on the Australian gold fields around 1854. Often referred to in the contemporary literature as celestials (children of the sun), they were viewed by large sections of society with suspicion and racism because of their different language, dress, food and customs.
By the 1840s Chinese men were trying to come to Australia because war, political instability and environmental conditions were making life hard in southern China.
Queensland's gold rush was later than New South Wales and Victoria, but the Chinese population in QLD was growing quickly since the first Chinese arrived in Brisbane in 1848. In 1860, there were 286 Chinese in Queensland. One of the famous Chinese businessman Andrew Leon settled in Cooktown in 1866.
In a book titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies claims that in the 1420's several fleets of Chinese ships sailed around the world, making contact with many countries before Europeans explored them, including Australia.
Records show that about 18 Chinese settlers had immigrated to Australia before 1848. The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney is reported to have been Mak Sai Ying. Born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798, he arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.
After British colonisation, the name New Holland was retained for several decades and the south polar continent continued to be called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia.
In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work, especially in the garment industry.
With high unemployment in Britain at the time, many people saw migration to Australia as a chance for a better life. The majority of the free settlers from the British Isles came from England, but tens of thousands came from Ireland as well. Large numbers of Irish people came to Australia to flee the Potato Famine.
Locally sourced meat, seafood and vegetables were complemented by imported ingredients such as Cantonese sausage, tofu, lychee nuts, black fungus and bamboo shoots. By the late 1800s, about a third of commercial cooks in Australia were Chinese.
After the Victorian and NSW gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s, the numbers of Chinese in those colonies declined significantly. In 1873 in the far north of Queensland at the Palmer River, after the discovery of gold there was another rush and by 1877 there were 20,000 Chinese there.
Central New South Wales was the scene of some of the worst violence against Chinese miners. European diggers feared economic competition and misunderstood Chinese mining methods and cultural practices. As frustration grew, attacks on the Chinese miners increased.
At the peak of gold rush immigration in 1852, 20,000 Chinese immigrated to California, out of a total of 67,000 people, thus, Chinese immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of all immigrants.
Chinese immigrants soon found that many Americans did not welcome them. In 1852, California placed a high monthly tax on all foreign miners. Chinese miners had no choice but to pay this tax if they wanted to mine for gold in California. Chinese workers were also the targets of violent attacks in the mining camps.
China is Australia's largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for nearly one third (31 per cent) of our trade with the world.
Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked in the California Gold Rush of the 1850s and the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s. They also worked as laborers in Western mines. They suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. The white people were stirred to anger by the "yellow peril" rhetoric .
Even as they struggled to find work, Chinese immigrants were also fighting for their lives. During their first few decades in the United States, they endured an epidemic of violent racist attacks, a campaign of persecution and murder that today seems shocking.
By the mid-nineteenth century China's population reached 450 million or more, more than three times the level in 1500. The inevitable results were land shortages, famine, and an increasingly impoverished rural population. Heavy taxes, inflation, and greedy local officials further worsened the farmer's situation.
Six colonies were formed in Australia: New South Wales, 1788; Tasmania, 1825; Western Australia, 1829; South Australia, 1836; Victoria, 1851; and Queensland, 1859. These same colonies later became the states of the Australian Commonwealth.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as “New Holland”, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicized. Terra Australia still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts.
This name is very close to the modern Chinese name for Australia which is “Aodaliya” (澳大利亚) for the large island and “Ao Zhou” (澳洲) for the continent.
Chinese miners brought rice seeds to Australia in the 1850s, and a rice mill was established in North Queensland in 1888, but the cultivation of rice in the area was soon largely abandoned in favour of sugar cane. Takasuka made the first serious attempt at rice cultivation in south-eastern Australia.