Life.Culture.Discovery.

Half Chinese, half white Australian – the mixed-race families who thrived when many did not amid 19th century prejudices

During the Australian gold rush, 40,000 Chinese men arrived to seek their fortune. Some married white women, overcame hostility and saw their children at least partly accepted

Reading Time:7 minutes

William “Billy” Edward Sing was raised by his Chinese father and English mother in Clermont, Queensland. The subject of a biography, novel and a television miniseries – in which his character was whitewashed – he is considered to have been Australia’s deadliest military sniper. Photo: courtesy of the Australian War Memorial

Published: 4:15am, 10 Jul 2021Updated: 5:34am, 10 Jul 2021

By the 1850s, the opium wars had devastated China and brought the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) to the verge of collapse, while far to the south a gold rush had led to a period of unprecedented economic growth. Setting out towards a faraway fortune, nearly 40,000 Chinese men left home for “Xin Jin Shan”, or New Gold Mountain, also known as Australia.

Highland towns such as Bendigo and Ballarat were full of new arrivals. Chinese immigrants proved highly adaptable in the booming state of Victoria, channelling moisture through drought-stricken soil to grow vegetables and hauling mining equipment over their shoulders in the absence of wheeled transport or load-bearing animals.

But the Chinese miners were allowed on-site only after the British, Scottish and Germans had gouged the earth and sifted the creeks to their satisfaction.

Things did not become easier or more equitable as the years passed, and racial tensions boiled over during the Lambing Flat riots of 1860, a series of mob attacks that saw Chinese men lose their braided hair, and sometimes their lives.

This led not to the government passing laws to protect those under attack, but to the foundation of the White Australia policy: 1861’s Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act.

Just as Chinese have been unfairly associated with Covid-19 today, in the 19th century, they were regarded as spreaders of typhoid and smallpox, maligned through editorial cartoons in major news outlets, such as The Mongolian Octopus – His Grip On Australia, by Phil May, published in The Bulletin in 1886.

Phil May’s The Mongolian Octopus – His Grip on Australia, an 1886 drawing for The Bulletin.