Explore St. George's Chinese History
The Amoy shepherds arrived as indentured labourers from ancient China, bound by what would be considered today as unconscionable five-year contracts. Most of them were illiterate and came willingly, driven by the desperate need to escape the continual rice harvest shortages that plagued their villages. "Thus, many villages now talk of twenty, thirty, or forty crop, or a nobody crop - meaning the crop is such that twenty, thirty or forty of their clan will have to emigrate ..." wrote C.T. Gardner in the China Review of 1896-97.
Such emigration only became feasible after the Opium War of 1840-42. Before then, leaving the Emperor's realm was punishable by death. However, the British, needing cheap "coolie" labour for their vast empire, exploited the weakened Ching Emperor's inability to resist foreign demands. Consequently, many impoverished men from Amoy embarked on a journey to New South Wales, Australia, in hopes of earning wages to alleviate famine at home. Unfortunately, for most, it was a journey into a lonely and impoverished life, stranded in a hostile foreign land with no hope of return.
Municipal records of their burial were lost in a flood, leaving us unable to trace their ancestral villages or the lives they led to the end. We do not know if they had interactions with Aboriginal people, who had become integral to the pastoral industry by 1858, or if some married Aboriginal women over time. Nor do we know their thoughts on the fringe camps set up by Aboriginal people near St George after their failed resistance between 1847 and 1848.
Like the Amoy sojourners, the Aboriginal peoples had resigned themselves to the overwhelming odds against them. It would have been interesting to know if the Amoy shepherds ever heard about the attacks on Chinese gold seekers in Buckland Valley in 1857, Lambing Flat in 1861, or Brisbane's "Night of Broken Glass" in 1888, when most Chinese-occupied buildings were vandalized and looted.
Today, we can only speculate how they might have reacted to such news, if they ever did, and how it affected their spirits. But whatever the answers might be, they are now buried with the Amoy sojourners, who found themselves stranded in a foreign land, too poor to return home and too ashamed for not having succeeded or maintained contact with those they left behind.
History shows that the Chinese were treated as vermin for the first fifty years after their arrival, targeted by any means necessary. At Federation in 1901, they became tolerated aliens, destined to die out under the White Australia policy'sDictation Test. However, the Chinese did not disappear, thanks in part to China's importance as Australia's third-largest export market. Over time, especially during the inter-war years, "John Chinaman" was rehabilitated in Australian novels as a reliable and loyal worker. Eventually, the Chinese were recognized as honest, hardworking people who had significantly contributed to building Australia. In 1972, a change in government ended the White Australia policy, and Chinese immigrants from former European colonies in Asia began to be selectively allowed into Australia. Multiculturalism was introduced to gloss over the sins of the White Australia policy.