In 2020 I received a grant from the Judith Neilson Institute and Walkley public fund to create an audio documentary about the Chinese history of Tasmania.
Australia has always had a problem with racism but since the outbreak of Covid-19 we have seen another rise in racism toward Asians in Australia. We often view people of colour as 'newcomers' and there is a long and dangerous legacy of associating Chinese people in Australia with disease. The implication is that new immigrants bring new threats to a 'white Australia'. But the reality is that Australia was built on the backs of immigrants, and people from all over Asia have been a part of Australian culture for a long time. Learning about the history of immigration helps us to understand that this country’s heritage is not so White as we might imagine and it feels like this perspective is more important than ever right now.
Tasmania has a long and rich history of Chinese immigration. In the 19th Century the town of Weldborough had a booming Chinese population that outnumbered Europeans 10 to 1. They worked in the tin mines, owned most local businesses and even started Tasmania's first casino. there was an ornate local temple, and the remains of a Chinese cemetery can still be seen there today.
I’d like to start by introducing my sound designer Ben Cannings.
Ben is a musician and composer who grew up in the North West of Tasmania. He graduated with a Bachelor of Classical Composition and has written music for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s education program. Ben also wrote the theme and transition music for our previous project ‘Under The Sun’.
Ben is truly throwing himself into this project and has been accompanying me on my investigative journey, capturing field recordings from historic sites in Weldborough and sitting in on interviews to better understand characters, moods and themes.
The first interview for the project was with Chinese-Tasmanian artist Chen Ping.
Chen Ping grew up in China but has lived in Tasmania for the past 26 years. He studied at both the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Tasmania. He is an accomplished artist who has exhibited all around the world, including the Venice Biennale in 2013 and 2017.
Chen feels that his identity belongs both in China and Tasmania, he resonates with the duality of belonging that he believes the early Chinese immigrants in the North East felt. Chen says he wanted to create lives and events for the characters of the Chinese Tin miners that go beyond the impersonal facts and figures of recorded history.
Chen’s series ‘Unseen Mountain’ is a tribute to those miners. His paintings depict beautifully abstract imaginary scenes of the miners, their houses, carts and tools enveloped in wild Tasmanian landscapes.
You can view his work here
Next I spoke to Kate Bagnall, a scholar of Chinese-Australian history who specialises in the history of women, children and families.
Her research seeks to complexify and humanise relationships between white women and Chinese men. At the time these women were stereotyped as poor Irish prostitutes with no better options, and the men as immoral, vice ridden seducers. But Kate writes that “white women and Chinese men came together for reasons of love, comfort, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family”.
In retrospect historians have sought to tell positive stories of these relationships often to perpetuate the ‘good migrant’ and ‘successful integration’ narratives. This too is dangerous, says Kate, we shouldn’t deny that these relationships were often difficult and suffered greatly from the racial prejudices heaped upon them by a white colonial society obsessing over women’s bodies as a battlefield for ‘racial purity’.
You can read Kate’s work here
My next stop was the home of Jan Everett, a descendent of Chinese tin miners.
Jan’s father’s maternal grandfather was Chin Mon Tok. He immigrated in 1864 to South Australia, then on to Ballarat and finally to Tasmania in the 1870s.
Jan’s father’s paternal grandfather was Ma Louey. He first came to Australia in 1956. Jan’s grandfather and father mined tin at Main Creek until 1954.
She remembers watching them extract the tin from the river bank.
“I used to go when I was little with them when they mined. Dad would blow the bank with gel ignite and then they’d run it down the sluice to collect the tin, then they’d take it home and they’d re-sluice it at home to refine it down”
This reporting is supported by a Judith Neilson Institute Freelance Grant for Asian Journalism.