'John and Jackey': An exploration of Aboriginal and Chinese people's associations on the Victorian goldfields
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 13, no. No. (2015), p. 23-41
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- Description: While much has been written about Chinese miners, much less has been said about Aboriginal miners and even less about Aboriginal-Chinese relations on the gold fields and elsewhere. Historians and other writers, such as Stephenson, Dunstan, Gittins, Cronin, Ramsay and Edwards and Shen, have largely ignored Aboriginal associations with Chinese people in colonial Victoria. Eric Rolls's study is representative of this absence - when discussing Australia's colonial racial policies towards the Chinese on the Victorian gold fields, Rolls is reluctant to draw many parallels between the Chinese, one group of people largely hidden from the historical gaze, and Aborigines, another group almost expunged from memory. A similar pattern can be seen in the historiography of encounters in other nations between Indigenous and Chinese people, such as in New Zealand and British Columbia where the paucity of the records initially led Yu to note: 'Here was a world only glimpsed'.
A golden connection: Exploring the challenges of developing interpretation strategies for a Chinese heritage precinct on the central Victorian goldfields
- Authors: Frost, Warwick , Laing, Jennifer , Reeves, Keir , Wheeler, Fiona
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Historic Environment Vol. 24, no. 1 (2012), p. 35-40
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This article introduces and evaluates heritage tourism interpretation strategies for depicting the Chinese-Australian gold seeking experience across an urban tourism landscape in central Victoria, Australia. The city of Bendigo has its origins in the nineteenth century goldrushes and contains a variety of heritage sites, most notably those connected with the Chinese migration to the region in search of gold. These sites, including a temple, museum, cemetery, and kiln site, form arguably one of the most complete collections of Chinese goldrush heritage assets still in existence across the globe and have the potential to be marketed to visitors as a Chinese heritage precinct. They provide a direct familial and cultural nexus between southern China and Australia, yet also highlight a complex historical encounter that requires development of visitor interpretation to bring the stories to life and provide meaning and tourist appeal. This article, using a cultural landscape model, will evaluate the way in which key historical assets can be understood as heritage tourism attractions in the present day and the role of interpretation in that process, particularly focusing on the use of podcasts and promotional media films as interpretive tools. It will also consider how thematic interpretation, based on and acknowledging contested narratives, may add to the authenticity of the precinct for visitors and complement the built heritage. The findings suggest that while some of the Chinese heritage sites in Bendigo are successful tourism ventures or have strong tourist potential, overall the tourist experience is fragmented and would benefit from more integrated interpretation strategies that link the various sites across the precinct and the region.
Chinese places: ethnography and landscape
- Authors: McConville, Chris , Reeves, Keir
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Historic Environment Vol. 23, no. 3 (2011), p. 24-29
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- Description: Chinese immigrants and especially the Chinese on the goldfields of Victoria, now figure centrally in history curricula and in heritage and tourist promotions most prominently of course, through Bendigo’s Chinese Heritage Precinct and the Gum San Heritage Centre in Ararat. These public representations of nineteenth-century diversity draw equally from a reflexive, culturally-informed historiography and a radically transformed popular culture in Australia, Victoria in particular (Waterhouse 2009: 11–14). No doubt, when heritage analysis of the central goldfields was first systematised, following the Victorian Historic Buildings Act (1974) and a subsequent sequence of municipal conservation studies, the Chinese appeared as something of a curiosity, on the margins of the enterprise of mining and peripheral to the heritage of goldfields towns (Davison 1991). Only after decades of research and widening perceptions of what could be properly classed as heritage, has Chinese settlement emerged as critical to assessment and interpretation, and of course heritage tourism, within townships as well as in state forests and national parks. Perhaps coincidentally this interest in Chinese heritage parallels a revival of Chinese immigration to Australia, in a broad view, comparable to the peaks of the nineteenth-century gold era. And yet, in part because so many remnants of the work of Chinese settlers have been erased, and their intricate mining systems fragmented, these sites unintentionally revert to the status occupied years ago by their creators – as eccentric curiosities.
The attraction of gold mining in Victoria for aboriginal people
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 6, no. (2008), p. 46-69
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- Description: Aboriginal people were a very visible presence on the goldfields in nineteenth century Victoria. This paper examines why Aboriginal people were attracted to the gold fields of nineteenth century Victoria and explores the extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors such as new wealth, new sights, new sounds, new alliances which prompted Aboriginal people to participate in 'gold society'.