 Early
Chinese History
The
contribution made by Chinese immigrants in colonising the Australian
continent has been seriously underestimated and is mostly forgotten by the
vast majority of modern day Australians. Likewise, their part in the
early development of Cairns has been misjudged, and in some instances,
completely overlooked.
As one researcher has written regarding this oversight,
"During the nineteen twenties and early thirties, when towns in the Cairns
district were celebrating their first fifty years, commemorative booklets
virtually ignored the earlier importance of the Chinese...This omission
should certainly be corrected with reference to North Queensland, where
coloured minorities largely laid the economic foundations of the region.
In the Cairns district, the most prominent non-European group was
the Chinese." [Cathie May - "Topsawyers: The Chinese
In Cairns, 1870-1920", Page 1. © James Cook
University 1984, 1996.]
The reason for
this less than adequate acknowledgement of the role of
the Chinese in our nation's development can be attributed to a number of
factors, not the least being the scarcity of records that were kept by the
Chinese themselves. A documented history is sketchy at best;
however, serious attempts are being made in our day, by interested
parties, to piece together historic events, gleaning information from
archives of old newspapers, Government records and a number of other
sources that have been preserved locally.
In Cairns and its adjacent hinterland Chinese history
has its birth with the legendary Palmer River gold rush which began in
1873. Rising to prominence with great fanfare, the Palmer River gold
rush was over nearly as quickly as it began, leaving many disillusioned
miners looking for something else to do...
(Article truncated at this point.)
 
Above left: Sleepy
Cooktown where thousands of Chinese disembarked on their way to the
Palmer River gold
fields. Above right: The Chinese Shrine at Cooktown cemetery.
During its
heyday, the Palmer was home to a population numbering in the tens of
thousands. Made up of miners, storekeepers, publicans and an
assortment of support people, this vast number included over 10,000
Chinese. In the 1890's Cooktown, the nearest port and supply centre
for the Palmer, boasted a total population of
more than 35,000, with a good
proportion also being Chinese.
Chinese miners began arriving in the Cooktown area
within weeks of Mulligan's discovery, mostly from other areas in
Australia, such as Western Australia, where Chinese communities were already established, but it wasn't
long before they began arriving in great numbers directly from
China.
The Chinese population peaked at 17,000
in 1877.
 
Above left: A view
inside the Hou Wang Temple.
Above right: A memorial
statue at the interpretive centre.
The Chinese were meticulous workers and were very
successful at recovering the fine alluvial gold from the soil of the
Palmer River, even after European diggers had mined an area and
moved on. During the dry season, when water was scarce, the Chinese
would make preparation for the next wet by digging the
soil out of the beds of dry creeks, and
stacking the soil in large piles ready for the arrival of
rain to wash the gold free...
(Article truncated at this point)
This condensed sample from the article
on Chinese History is from the "Local History" section of
Cairns-on-a-CD. The "Local History" section includes 3
articles - the Original Inhabitants,
the Europeans, and the Chinese.
The unabridged article contains eight pages of
photographs and interesting information.
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