| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, November 26, 2015 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | External Event, Larkin Building 15 Devonshire Place Room LA200 |
The first Chinese people to arrive in any number in Australia came as indentured labourers between 1847 and 1853, most of them working for pastoralists as shepherds. Dr. McGowan will discuss the Chinese people in rural Australia, focusing on north east Victoria and the Riverina district in NSW. After the gold rushes most Chinese in the region worked as labourers in the pastoral industry and the vineyards, or as market gardeners and tobacco farmers. He will discuss the invaluable role played by the Chinese in the agricultural and pastoral development of Australia, giving particular emphasis to the subject of prejudice and discrimination and Australia’s colonial and federal immigration restrictions. The daily lives of the Chinese and their relationships with the wider Australian community will also be discussed; many became highly regarded members of their local communities, and formed strong friendships with white Australians.
Dr Barry McGowan is a Canberra-based heritage consultant and historian and a Research Associate at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. He has written extensively on the history and heritage of Australian and Chinese-Australian mining communities and Australian ghost towns. His best known books are Ghost Towns of Australia, and Fool’s Gold. Myths and legends of gold-seeking in Australia.
He has also written several thematic histories of the Chinese people in regional and rural Australia, and is currently working on a thematic history of the Chinese people in Central New South Wales. In October of this year his most recent publication, Tracking the Dragon: Thematic History of the Chinese people in the Rutherglen/Wahgunyah region of the Indigo Shire, Victoria, was short listed and commended in the 2015 Victorian Community History Awards.
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