The Chinese in the Australian Goldfields

China and AustraliaAlong with many other nationalities,the

Chinese rushed to the Australian

(especially Victorian) goldfields to find

their fortune.

They were very experienced

prospectors. They could generally live

with less, in poorer conditions and were

more patient than other prospectors.

GoldrushWhen the news of the discovery of gold in Victoria reached China in 1853, many Chinese hurried to the goldfields. They were able to do this with a loan from Chinese traders. They would repay the loan with gold found in Australia that was sent back to China. If the loan was unpaid, the man’s family would become slaves to the trader who had lent him the money.

What would be the effect on the miners?

The Chinese quarter at Ballarat

The Chinese were not very popular on the goldfields when they arrived.Why?

Gold Rush

Chinese Mining Methods

The Chinese miners used different mining methods to the Europeans. They are said to

have seldom tackled new ground, preferring to go over ground abandoned by the

Europeans. It is thought that they found much gold which had been missed by European

miners in their haste.

On those occasions when the Chinese did dig for gold, it is commonly believed that they

constructed round shafts rather than square or rectangular ones. This is both sound

engineering, as a cylindrical shaft has better structural integrity than a square one which

needs a great deal of support, and a likely deference to the Chinese superstition that evil

spirits hide in corners, and they would not want to turn their back on such spirits.

Similarly, they had curves on their Joss house roofs and portals so that the evil spirits

would slide down and then swoop upwards away from them.

Tools usedDiggers in the gold rush used the following equipment to find gold:

● Panning involved the use of a solid pan.

● Cradling involved a wooden box loosely resembling a cradle, which would separate the gold from the soil.

● Picks were used to fossick among rocks and mullock heaps.

● Sieves were like a pan but with a mesh base through which the water would drain, to help separate gold from similar

sized particles.

● Windlass helped in shaft-mining.

● A poppet head and winch was a larger version of the windlass. Poppet heads stood over deep mining shafts.

● Stamper batteries were large steam-driven machines, which were used to crush the quartz in order to extract gold.Other tools included utensils for digging and carrying gold-bearing soil. They included basic equipment for survival, for constructing some sort of shelter, or simple protection. These included:

shovel,pick,rope, saw, axe, pick, wheelbarrow, knife, gun, knife, scales, bucket

The Chinese MinersThey presented with a very different culture. They had their own camps and kept to themselves. Most did not speak English. They worked in teams, often on land mined by European miners. They has achieved success with these “new” methods and they became very unpopular. They were resented because of the different ways they dressed, ate and lived in general.What do we call this treatment of other cultures today?

What happened next?The resentment of the European miners towards the Chinese grew and a Royal Commission was held to look into the issue.The result was the “White Australia Policy”. Today this would be considered racist.The Chinese that arrived in Australia had to pay a fee to enter the Goldfields. No other migrant group was charged this fee. They got around this by landing in South Australia and walking into Victoria. The Chinese also had to pay a protection fee, a miner’s right and a residence ticket and then a protector was appointed to keep them separate from the Europeans.Aggression still continued often started by the Europeans. When the gold ran out, many Chinese returned home. A few settled permanently in Australia.