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Chinese history

Andrew Jakubowicz.

Images of Chinese history in Victoria before Federation (for further information please see the description below)

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

03 February 2009

Source:

Slides 01, 02, 03, 06, 06a, 06b, 07, 08 and 09 - State Library of Victoria collections
Slides 04, 05 - Museum of Chinese Australian History

Format:

swf (Flash);

File size:

--

Length:

11 Slides

Transcript

DESCRIPTION
Chinese in the 19th Century in Victoria
Slide 1
Chinese spilled out of ships at Melbourne throughout 1855 and 1856. Samuel Brees captured the movement in this painting of a long line of men passing through Flemington in 1856 at the outset of trek to the central gold field districts.
State Library of Victoria collections
Painting
Accessions H17071
Slide 2
Melbourne’s first Chinese Temple opened in 1866. Temples, or ‘Joss Houses’, sprung up across the colony as Chinese communities fanned out across the diggings. As quickly, most closed as diggings were worked out and miners sought fresh ground or returned to China. The Melbourne Temple, established by the See Yup Society at Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne), was one that endured into the twenty-first century.
State Library of Victoria collections
Wood engraving print, the Australian News, December 20 1866
Accession IAN20/12/66/5
Slide 3
In this image for readers of the Australasian Sketcher, Chinese gamblers are a subject of intense curiosity for a mixed Little Bourke Street audience. The combinations of light and shadow, of mystery, concealment and expose of the lottery recurs throughout the reportage of the ‘Chinese Quarter’ from the 1870s to the new century.
Museum of Chinese Australian History
Lotteries: Marking the Tickets
Wood engraving print, The Australasian Sketcher, 15 April 1876
Item 85.07.17
State Library of Victoria collections
Wood engraving print, The Australasian Sketcher, 15 April 1876
Accession A/S15/04/76/8
Slide 4
'The Chinese Quarter'
If many reports were negative, public perspectives overall were mixed, even when racial vilification was at a peak. The Graphic newspaper’s account of 1880 displays variety in western and eastern clothes and an orderliness to daily life among the establishments fronting the roads and laneways of the Chinese Quarter that alluded other reports.
Museum of Chinese Australian History
Item: 85.07.18
The Graphic, 13 November 1880
Slide 5
By the 1890s, the red-brick frontages of successful merchant houses sat side by side with Christian churches, society clubhouses and other ‘respectable’ premises that gave Little Bourke Street its distinctive late-Victorian solidity and human scale. The fabric of Melbourne’s ‘Chinese Quarter’ was added to and improved from its beginnings in the 1850s to its peak and then decline by the 1920s.
Museum of Chinese Australian History
Item: 2006.01.03; c. 1920s
Photographer Samuel Him, 55 Madeline St, Carlton
Slide 6, 6a, 6b
The ‘Chinese Quarter’ centred on Little Bourke, Lonsdale and Little Lonsdale Streets and their alleyways. With their diverse social mixes and proximity to the red light and working class districts, their boundaries blurred. The catch all, ‘slums’ was applied in this account of ‘Making cheap furniture – In a Chinese eating house – A hawker – The Chinese quarter, Little Bourke Street – In an opium den – A laundry man – In a Chinese gambling hell – Their victims.
State Library of Victoria collections
Accession IAN01/09/93/17
Wood engraving published in the The Illustrated Australian News, 1 September 1893
Slide 7
At the end of 1901, when the Immigration Restriction Act barred further migration, there were 2,500 living in Melbourne. In May they built their own celebratory archway, one of many to grace the main city intersections to mark the opening of the Australia’s first national Parliament and as a welcome to the royal visitors.
State Library of Victoria collections
Accession H91.93/76
Chinese citizens arch for the Royal Visit, Edward VII
Glass lantern slide with hand colouring; H G Myers, 1901
Slide 8
At the end of 1901, when the Immigration Restriction Act barred further migration, there were some 2,500 living in Melbourne of a State population of 7,500. In May these ‘citizens’ constructed a celebratory archway, one of many gracing city intersections and welcoming to the royal visit that marked the opening of the Australia’s first national Parliament. Three ceremonial dragons paraded through the city streets – a highlight of the celebrations of nationhood, according to the Melbourne Argus – and Loong, some 90 metres in length and the largest of them all came from Bendigo, not Melbourne.
State Library of Victoria collections
Chinese arch and procession picture
Accession H96.160/651 [Image Number: cc001003]
Chinese citizens arch for the Royal Visit
Photograph: gelatin silver, Harvie & Sutcliffe, 1901
Slide 9
Funeral ceremonies and annual visits to gravesides were important communal events from the 1850s. Australia’s Chinese population was in steady decline from the 1860s but the expansion of cemetery monuments continued up to the 1920s. Many in the metropolitan and regional cities and towns survived into the twenty-first century.
State Library of Victoria collections
Chinese ovens in the old Beechworth Cemetery
Accession Number: H23579
photograph : gelatin silver, c. 1914?