THE CHINESE PRESENCE IN THE CANBERRA-QUEANBEYAN DISTRICT, PRE-1862, PART 3, by James McDonald

This is part of a series of articles on non-Anglo/Celtic migration to the Canberra-Queanbeyan district in the 1824-61 period. We have limited the investigation to the early colonial period, prior to the implementation of the Robertson land reforms in January 1862, which brought an influx of free selectors into the Canberra-Queanbeyan district and throughout NSW, dramatically altering the migration story.

PART THREE: Other evidence of Chinese migrants in the district, pre-1862[1]

There are two fords of the Queanbeyan River that were both at one time known as ‘Chinaman’s Crossing’. One was located near The Oaks and the other at Morisset Street where it meets the river.[2] An early Asian market garden was why the latter crossing was named ‘Chinaman’s Crossing’ and I suspect that the same explanation is behind The Oaks ford, which even today is fertile land well-suited to vegetable crops. The Morisset market garden was operated by Yen You, Ping Yen, and a man only known as ‘Hundred and Fifty’. By 1863, John Kaye, another man of Asian heritage (described as a ‘Chinaman’) was selling poultry in Queanbeyan.[3] He may have been there earlier than that year and might fall within our timeframe, if we allow him a year or two to establish his garden.

John Moon, ‘a Chinaman cook’, was working in Catherine Breen’s Harp of Erin in Queanbeyan in 1860. He was the victim of theft when Thomas Byrne stole his watch, razor, and other personal items, even including a pound of lard.[4] In Gundaroo, a few years later, another Chinese cook, Charley He (or O-He), instigated action against his employer, William Cresswell, who owed him unpaid wages. When the case was dismissed on the basis of it being one man’s word against another, Charley He ‘grew so enraged that he attempted a breach of the peace on [the] defendant in the court … was consequently arrested, and after being admonished by the bench, was discharged’. It seems that Charley He had been seriously wronged. Creswell spent his later years in the Parramatta Asylum and once even claimed to be Arthur Orton who, some believed, was the notorious missing Englishman, Sir Roger Tichborne.[5] But Charley He is probably too late to be included in our timeframe.

In 1861 – the very year of the dreadful Lambing Flat anti-Asian riots – we hear of an early instance of a mixed marriage. An unnamed European woman was living with her Chinese spouse (also unnamed) and, possibly, some of his relatives, when a fire burnt down the hut where she had placed everything while whitewashing their cottage.[6] In fact, the court reports of the 1860s evince a strong Asian presence in the district. John Asse (‘a Chinaman’) was fined 5 shillings for being ‘drunk and disorderly’ in Queanbeyan in September 1860.[7] Out of timeframe, perhaps, is Charley Mooney (‘a Chinese’) who was reported as absconding from the service of Dr William Hayley at The Oaks and was, apparently, brought to trial.[8]

As time went by, the district saw significantly large groups of Chinese miners travelling through to the gold fields. For example, Canberra resident, George Williams, relays the following account of a group of Chinese diggers. He was walking to school with other children when he came across them. This would have been in late 1851 or 1852, when George was aged about 13 or 14 years.

… we met 50 or perhaps 100 Chinese in a long row, trotting along with bamboo poles, and baskets on each end slung on shoulders, making for Major’s Creek and Araluen diggings with their picks and shovels and camping gear. We were all more or less afraid and got off the road and watched them pass along.[9]

'Might versus Right' by Samuel Thomas Gill, c 1862-63:
in the foreground, a European miner is dragging a Chinese miner away by his hair

Source:  State Library of NSW

The most productive of the local diggings was Brooks Creek to the southeast of Gundaroo. Gold was found there by Charles Masters senior and his children, who managed to dig out a small fortune uncontested before word leaked out.[10] Masters had been a stockman at Esther Mead, since arriving in 1837, and then began farming on his own account at Geary’s Gap on land rented from the Packers.[11] Although there were more diggers at a single point in time at Foxlow (300 miners), it was Brooks Creek (270 miners), which was the best yielding mine in the Canberra-Queanbeyan district, and sustained itself over the longest period of time, so that slab huts even replaced the canvas tents of the original miners. Alluvial gold was discovered there in 1860, and by early 1861, there was a miners’ camp of about 60 diggers with two stores in a type of shantytown, which was even serviced by regular coaches from Goulburn and Queanbeyan.[12] The population doubled to about 120 by the end of the year, and by February 1862, 150 Chinese miners had arrived there. To the annoyance of one pious newspaper correspondent, they were noticed to be even working on the sabbath.

I have not yet heard what success John Chinaman has had in gold digging, beyond that they have sold several small lots to the storekeepers at Gundaroo, who, I guess, are doing the best digging, especially, on Sunday, as John appears to make that his market-day.[13]

Cartographer: Helen Walpole

Of course, this was at the peak of the resentment against Chinese diggers in Australia. At Nanima, even some of the Lambing Flat victims themselves began to appear in our district. Another Lambing Flat connection to the Canberra-Queanbeyan district is that Constable Martin Brennan distinguished himself at the riots, ‘where he was wounded in the arm and had four horses shot under him’.[14] If it were not for the brave actions of the police and the colonial government at that time, in the face of such a vitriolic anti-Chinese tide, deaths would have occurred and the injury toll among the Asian diggers would have been so much worse.

Gold was first found at Nanima, near Murrumbateman, on a property that was still owned by Robert Johnston, before February 1861.

On several occasions we have reported the finding of small pieces of gold in the banks of Nanama [sic] Creek, a tributary of the Gundaroo River … Within the last week or ten days there has been a miniature rush to the spot, and very reasonable hopes are entertained that Nanama Creek and its neighbourhood will turn out a payable gold-field … There are on the ground at the present time about fifteen or eighteen Europeans and over thirty Chinamen, the latter consisting of exiles of Lambing Flat.[15]

It would be interesting to see how different the tensions were on the diggings between the European and Asian diggers, given that the latter group were Lambing Flat ‘exiles’ and had been so recently abused. They must have kept to themselves and avoided conflict, as best they could.

Summary of the Chinese presence, pre-1862

I will conclude this three-part study of the early Chinese presence in the Canberra-Queanbeyan district in the period up to 1862, with a summary of the individuals I have been able to find. Hopefully, other and future researchers will be able to unearth the stories of even more individuals or add further flesh to the bones of the stories I have tried to collate.

The first confirmed presence of Chinese migrants in the Canberra-Queanbeyan district comes in the form of the Cuppacumbalong shepherds recruited by James Wright from Sydney in c. 1851. Despite the poor conditions and lop-sided indenture contracts experienced by these men, they appear to have stayed until 1854, when five of them were listed as having absconded. The context suggests that they were seeking their fortune on the goldfields. The first known named member of this group of the Cuppacumbalong shepherds was Mr Chow, who was rescued by local Aboriginal man, Long Jimmy, from the flooded Murrumbidgee in 1852 near Tharwa. After the goldrush, one or more may have returned, as one of the original shepherds, Theak (perhaps See Hock), was buried in the old Cuppacumbalong cemetery in 1867 by the De Salis family.

Other than the Cuppacumbalong shepherds, there was a clear Chinese presence in Queanbeyan with two Chinese market gardens on the river flats and a cook, John Moon, working at Breen’s inn, Harp of Erin. There was even a mixed family living in a Queanbeyan cottage as early as 1861. Hence the nature of this migrant cohort and its contribution to Queanbeyan is very different than what used to be supposed: i.e., that the Chinese presence does not emerge until the Chinese miners of the gold-rush decade. The earliest presence of Chinese miners in the district as a distinct group in the Canberra-Queanbeyan district, does not appear until the gang of 30 at Nanima Creek diggings, many of whom had experienced the anti-Asian violence at the Lambing Flat riots, shortly before.

Of course, after 1861, the Chinese presence in the region was only to grow with Chinese residents represented in many fields of endeavour. Table 1 lists the known Asian residents of the district in the period from the invasion until the introduction of Robertson’s land reforms in January 1862.

Table 1: Verified Asian individuals in the Canberra-Queanbeyan district, 1824-61

Years	Transcribed name (if known)	Notes
June 1852	Mr Chow and four unnamed colleagues	Shepherds at Cuppacumbalong
May, 1854	Yo Quin (sometimes, Queen)	Shepherd who absconded from Cuppacumbalong
October 1854	Teh Tsan, See Hock, Ug Moo, and Ko Tsn	Shepherds who absconded from Cuppacumbalong
1860	John Moon	A cook at Catherine Breen’s Harp of Erin in Queanbeyan
c. 1860	Yen You, Ping Yeng, and ‘Hundred and Fifty’	Market gardeners at Queanbeyan
September 1860	John Asse	Fined for being ‘drunk and disorderly’ in Queanbeyan
1861	Unnamed couple in a mixed marriage	Chinese husband; their hut is burnt down in Queanbeyan
March 1861	30 Chinese miners	At Nanima Creek diggings; many of them were refugees from Lambing Flat
By February 1862	150 Chinese miners	At Brooks Creek gold field
By 1863	John Kaye	Poultry seller in Queanbeyan
Before 1864	Charley He (or O-He)	Cook at Gundaroo
Before 1865	Charley Mooney	Absconded from the employment of Dr Hayley at The Oaks
August 1867	Theak (possibly = See Hock)	Last of the Cuppacumbalong shepherds is buried.

Please note that the four greyed-out rows contain individuals who may not have been resident by 1861. Given the poor record in transcribing Asian names into English by the colonial authorities, there may well be individuals in the table listed under different names. For example, Theak and See Hock may be the same person.

Endnotes

1. Please note that offensive racist terms used in the period are included in this article. This study builds on what I have already written in J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 255-6, 290, 319-22; J. McDonald, J. Canberra: III. Pastoral Plutocracy (1862-1906), Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 200-5. That original work benefited from information generously shared by Monica Tankey in 2022-23. I also appreciate the detailed feedback of Ann Tündern-Smith, who is editing the series. Information was also shared by Joanne Maples and Tony Maple on a number of Chinese residents in the Goulburn and Braidwood areas, although these towns are outside what we have defined as the Canberra-Queanbeyan district.↩

2. See R. L. Cross, Bygone Queanbeyan, Queanbeyan Publishing Company, Queanbeyan, 1980 (1985 revised ed.), p. 69.↩

3. E. Lea-Scarlett, Queanbeyan: District and People, Queanbeyan Municipal Council, Queanbeyan, 1968, p. 114; M. E. Tankey, ‘Chinese Part of Canberra-Queanbeyan Scene Since 1863’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 8 (September) 1981, p. 43.↩

4. Golden Age, 29 December 1860, p. 2. See E. Lea-Scarlett in P. A. Selth (ed.), Canberra Collection, Lowden, Kilmore, 1976, p. 171. For Catherine Breen, see R. L. Cross, Bygone Queanbeyan, Queanbeyan Publishing Company, Queanbeyan, 1980 (1985 revised ed.), p. 23; P. B. Sheedy and E. A. Percy, Moneroo to Monaro: History of Monaro Street, 1830s-1995, Queanbeyan, Queanbeyan City Council, Queanbeyan, 1995, p. 208.↩

5. Golden Age, 7 January 1864, p. 2; 14 January 1864, p. 2. For Cresswell, see E. Lea-Scarlett, Gundaroo, Roebuck, Canberra, p. 74.↩

6. Golden Age, 16 February 1861, p. 2. Perhaps the most famous Euro-Asian marriage was that of Catherine Wells (born to convict parents, John Wells and Honora McCarthy, in Sydney in 1835) and John Tan Kee, a Xiamen labourer who migrated in 1851. They were married in Sydney, where they remained for the first few years before eventually settling at Carcoar. The Queanbeyan connection comes through their descendants. The Tankey family case study is provided at M. E. Tankey, ‘Chinese Part of Canberra-Queanbeyan Scene Since 1863’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 8 (September) 1981, pp. 43-45; J. McDonald, Canberra: III. Pastoral Plutocracy (1862-1906), Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp: 200-5.↩

7. Golden Age, 15 September 1860, p. 2; with P. M. Frei, Calamities, Fatalities, and Realities: Local and Regional Anecdotes from ‘The Golden Age’, 1860-1864, Queanbeyan, NSW, privately published, Duffy, 2005, p. 89 (correcting the arrest location as Macquoid Street). See E. Lea-Scarlett, Queanbeyan: District and People, Queanbeyan Municipal Council, Queanbeyan, 1968, p. 114.↩

8. See K. Williams, Oaks Estate: No Man’s Land, privately published, Canberra, 1997, pp. 12-13 (citing Golden Age, 20 April 1865), but I have not been able to verify the reference independently.↩

9. In S. Shumack (ed. J. E. and S. Shumack), 1967 (1977 reprint), An Autobiography, or, Tales and Legends of Canberra Pioneers, ANU Press, Canberra, 1967, p. 23. For George, see the entry for his father, John Williams, in P. Procter (ed.), Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan: from the District to the Australian Capital Territory, 1820-1930, HAGSOC, Canberra, 2001, p. 339. Cf. Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, 30 June 1858, p. 3.↩

10. Queanbeyan Observer, 28 September 1897, p. 2; E. Lea-Scarlett, Queanbeyan: District and People, Queanbeyan Municipal Council, Queanbeyan, 1968, p. 244.↩

11. See E. Lea-Scarlett, Gundaroo, Roebuck, Canberra, p. 81; P. Procter (ed.), Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan: from the District to the Australian Capital Territory, 1820-1930, HAGSOC, Canberra, 2001, p. 193. ↩

12. Golden Age, 20 June 1861, p. 2. See E. Lea-Scarlett, Gundaroo, Roebuck, Canberra, 1972, pp. 81-2; A, McNeill, and A. Walker (edd.), Sutton Stories: in the Words of the Locals: 150 Years, 1867-2017, Sutton and District Community Association, Sutton, 2019, pp. 22-3. ↩

13. Golden Age, 13 February 1862, p. 3. See E. Lea Scarlet, Gundaroo, Roebuck, Canberra, 1972, p. 86; L. L. Gillespie, Canberra: 1820-1913, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1991, pp. 131-2; B. McGowan, ‘The Lost Mines of the Canberra District: Part 3’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 30 (September) 1992, p. 26.↩

14. For Brennan, see J. McDonald, Canberra I: from Antiquity to the Invasion, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2023, p. 185; Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, p. 366.↩

15. Yass Courier, 2 March 1861, p. 2. See B. McGowan, B. ‘The Lost Mines of the Canberra District: Part 2’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 28 (September) 1991, p. 16.↩

THE CHINESE PRESENCE IN THE CANBERRA-QUEANBEYAN DISTRICT, PRE-1862, PART 2, by James McDonald

This is part of a series of articles on non-Anglo/Celtic migration to the Canberra-Queanbeyan district in the 1824-61 period. We have limited the investigation to the early colonial period, prior to the implementation of the Robertson land reforms in January 1862, which brought an influx of free selectors into the Canberra-Queanbeyan district and throughout NSW, dramatically altering the migration story.

PART TWO: The five Chinese shepherds at Cuppacumbalong [1]

The first recorded Asian residents in the Canberra-Queanbeyan region were recruited from Sydney by James Wright, sometime before June 1852, to work as shepherds at Cuppacumbalong.

Wright’s son, the flawed historian, William Davis Wright, recounts events related to these workers on two occasions.[2] The first is in an article on historical events connected to Tharwa, which was published in the Queanbeyan Observer on 29 March 1895. That article was written in response to the interest generated in the district from the opening of the new Tharwa bridge two days prior.[3] The second is in his book, titled Canberra, which he published in 1923, to take advantage of the upcoming opening of Parliament (at that time, anticipated for 1925) and the interest generated in the new national capital.[4]

In his book, William Wright says that the labour shortage in the district in 1851, due to the gold rush, was so severe that his father:

… went to Sydney and brought back five Chinamen to act as shepherds. These were not half bad, and some of them were still with us when Cuppercumberlong (sic) was sold to L. F. de Salis (sic).[5]

Wright goes on to explain how the men worked as shepherds and assisted during the great Murrumbidgee flood of 1852; although, in his earlier account he says it was 1851, as we will see.

In 1852 we had very heavy snow, so deep that the Chinamen were kept busy for several days cutting branches from the trees for the sheep to eat the leaves. The snow was followed by seventeen days’ continuous rain, causing the great Gundagai floods, and we had to turn out of our house – eleven of us – at one o’clock in the morning and walk through a backwater knee deep to find a safe place as well as we could.

The water was over four feet deep in the house next morning, and our refuge was the dairy hut, in which limited space we were huddled together – 24 in all.

For two weeks we had a miserable time, but the water subsided at last and gave us the opportunity of assessing the position. It was indeed a disastrous flood, doing immense and permanent injury to country and rivers.[6]

Further on in his book, when talking about the flight of Long Jimmy from Canberra after his fight with Noolup, he says:

I did not hear of him again, until the time of the great Gundagai floods, when he turned up and helped to rescue a drowning Chinaman.[7]

This latter incident is described in greater detail in his 1895 article, which is quoted below.

One rather amusing incident was: we had five Chinamen in a hut near where the new Tharwa bridge is now building. Four of them came away when the big bell rang for them (as they had been told to do in case the river did come up) about one o’clock in the morning. The other man refused to come and would not be persuaded. He said if the water rose to his bed he would get on the table and if it rose to that he would get on a door that was across the tie-beams and which sure enough he had to do before morning. I recollect when we went down in the morning to look for him the water was about thirty yards out round the Hut and was within eighteen inches of the roof. My uncles who had by this time come from Booroomba, fixed up an old horse trough to go in for him when Long Jimmy the blackfellow, turned up and he brought Mr. Chow out, who did not refuse this time to come.

I recollect there were twenty-four of us, including the five Chinamen, lived in a two-roomed hut at the old dairy station for two weeks. The next year, 1852, we had another flood but it did not reach within a foot of the one the year before. Still we all had to turn out.[8]

Wright is a highly unreliable source and even when what he says seems to be correct, the details are often amiss. However, on this occasion, there is a good range of corroborating evidence, most of it solid. Despite a few questions of detail, it shows that Wright’s account bears up fairly well. Concerning the contradiction in dates, we should probably accept his revision of 1852, given that that year was certainly the worst flood ever recorded on the Murrumbidgee.

But the diluvian tale presents another minor dilemma. Long Jimmy is also thought to have assisted the Gundagai victims during the great flood of 1852.[9] This places him about 160 km away by road at Gundagai, where he participated, it is believed, in the rescue of that town’s citizens with his Wiradjuri friends, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, in what remains Australia’s most devastating flood in terms of loss of life.[10] There is a statue dedicated to the Wiradjuri pair in the main street of Gundagai, such a celebrated act it was. Floods take a long time to subside and the river peaks at different times and in different places, so he could have been helping at both sites. But I think it is more likely to be the case that his connection with Gundagai is a conflation of what he did at Tharwa, and that the tradition that he was one of the Gundagai rescuers is false.[11] Wright does not place him at Gundagai.

The other detail of interest to us in the Wright passages is that the recalcitrant flood victim is named: Mr Chow. He has the distinction, therefore, of being the first named Asian individual living in our district. In this way, Mr Chow holds a special place in our history.

William Davis Wright
From the frontispiece to Canberra, 1923

Further evidence about the Cuppacumbalong shepherds comes from three separate police reports in 1854 of runaway Chinese workers employed by James Wright. The first man is revealed in the court report of the Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser and the NSW Police Gazette.[12] These documents, from May 1854, show that one of the Chinese shepherds at Cuppacumbalong, Yo Quin (sometimes, Queen), had absented himself without leave from the service of James Wright, had been apprehended in Goulburn, and was sent to Queanbeyan to appear before the Bench of Magistrates, of which, James Wright was one, himself. The NSW Police Gazette even includes a rudimentary description of him.

It could be argued that Yo Quin simply wanted to try his luck on the goldfields or perhaps personal affairs were drawing him home, but I suspect that poor conditions at Cuppacumbalong were also of concern.

We cannot trace Yo Quin any further in the colonial records. But before we leave him, we need to address a chronological question. If the men were recruited to Cuppacumbalong on or before June 1852 (the time of the great Murrumbidgee flood), as I suspect, then legally there could be no valid indenture contract extending beyond June 1854, and Yo Quin must have absconded at the very end of the second year of his contract unless he had signed on for another year as a regular worker or had been recruited separately at a date after June 1852. But this seems unlikely. And as another four men abscond in October (as we will soon see), it would appear that the Cuppacumbalong shepherds had all signed up for another year on regular contracts.

The conditions which George Forbes Davidson was offering his Chinese workers in 1838 (described in Part One), suggest that the terms of the initial contracts were akin to slavery in the first year and were not much better in the second, so there would be plenty of valid reasons for running off, no matter how benign the employer may have been. But let us be clear, James Wright was a callous master known for his macabre interest in personally inspecting the floggings of convicts punished in his service. This is all well documented.[13] And it was not just the convicts who worked for him but also the European employees, who absconded in breach of their contracts. For example, Charles Duming was charged with absconding from the service of James Wright when he was apprehended by the Chief Constable of the district in January 1854, the same year as the Chinese runaways.[14] So, there must have been plenty of good cause for Yo Quin to flee.

As it happens, four more Chinese shepherds absconded from Cuppacumbalong on the night of 20 October 1854. The extract from the entries in the NSW Police Gazette give us their names and descriptions. It was thought that they were headed either for the Monaro or Braidwood, which, if true, may indicate that the motivation was the gold diggings rather than returning home via Sydney.

We do not know what happened to Teh Tsan, See Hock, Ug Moo, and Ko Tsn. After this report, their names (or cognates thereof) have not been definitively identified in the records. Wright does not refer to any issue, and we might infer that the workers returned but, as noted earlier, he is an unreliable source.

It may be possible that Ug Moo is the 22-year-old, Aug Moo, who travelled with 76 other Chinese passengers from Sydney to Geelong in 1852 to work on farms emptied of workers who had left for the goldfields.[15] It may also be possible that See Hock is the See Hok who arrived in Sydney in 1852 and is listed in Darlinghurst Gaol in 1853 along with six other Chinese men on undefined charges.

At least one Asian worker remained at Cuppacumbalong into the 1860s. This is the possible seventh identifiable Chinese worker named, Theak, who is described as a Chinese shepherd buried in the original Cuppacumbalong cemetery on 19 August 1867. The only name with whom Theak might be matched is See Hock, but we can only guess whether they are in fact the same individual. I suspect that they are, as there are only ever listed five shepherds from that one intake in 1851-52. It may be possible that Yo Quin is Ko Tsn, which trims the list to five men. But this is purely speculative.

According to Bruce Moore, Theak was aged 75 and the last of the Chinese shepherds employed originally by James Wright but in the service of Leopold Fane De Salis since he had acquired Cuppacumbalong in 1855/56.[16] Theak’s was one of the three burials swept away by an 1870 Murrumbidgee flood, which prompted De Salis to contract Thomas Tong to move the cemetery to where the raised, circular cemetery is now sited near Cuppacumbalong homestead.

Endnotes

1. Please note that offensive racist terms used in the period are included in this article. This study builds on what I have already written in J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 255-6, 290, 319-22; J. McDonald, J. Canberra: III. Pastoral Plutocracy (1862-1906), Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 200-5. That original work benefited from information generously shared by Monica Tankey in 2022-23. I also appreciate the detailed feedback of Ann Tündern-Smith, who is editing the series. Information was also shared by Joanne Maples and Tony Maple on a number of Chinese residents in the Goulburn and Braidwood areas, even though these towns are outside what we have defined as the Canberra-Queanbeyan district.↩

2. Wright’s limited value as a historian is discussed at J. McDonald, Canberra I: From Antiquity to the Invasion, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2023, pp. 307-9.↩

3. For the lavish opening celebration at Tharwa Bridge, see J. McDonald, Canberra: III. Pastoral Plutocracy (1862-1906), Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 147-50.↩

4. For the release of his book and the national curiosity in Canberra in 1923-27, see J. McDonald, Canberra I: From Antiquity to the Invasion, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2023, pp. 306-7. Note that Bruce Moore (Cotter Country: a History of the Early Settlers, Pastoral Holdings and Events in and Around the County of Cowley, NSW, privately published, Yamba, 1999 [2006 reprint], pp. 56-7, 142) combines without acknowledgment both Wright passages for the information he includes on the Cuppacumbalong Chinese shepherds. It appears that he was not using any otherwise unknown source. Also see S. Blair and A Claoué-Long, ‘A Landscape of Captive Labour: Conserving and Interpreting the Evidence of the Convict Era in the Contemporary Landscape at Lanyon in the ACT’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 31 (March), 1993, p. 16; N. Brown, A History of Canberra, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, 2014, pp. 19-20.↩

5. W. D. Wright, Canberra, John Andrew, Sydney, 1923, p. 34. The sale to De Salis seems to have been finalised in May 1856.↩

6. W. D. Wright, Canberra, John Andrew, Sydney, 1923, p. 34. ↩

7. W. D. Wright, Canberra, John Andrew, Sydney, 1923, p. 34. For Long Jimmy see J. McDonald, Canberra I: From Antiquity to the Invasion, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2023, p. 169.↩

8. Queanbeyan Observer, 29 March 1895, p. 4.↩

9. A. Jackson-Nakano, The Kamberri: a History from the Records of Aboriginal Families in the Canberra-Queanbeyan District and Surrounds, 1820-1927, and Historical Overview, 1928-2001, Aboriginal History, Canberra, 2001, p. 92. Cf. Elizabeth McKeahnie in Queanbeyan Age and Queanbeyan Observer, 9 April 1920, p. 2.↩

10 See J. McDonald, Canberra I: From Antiquity to the Invasion, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2023, pp. 169-70.↩

11. It is intend to make this clear in the revised edition of Canberra I planned for release, later in 2026.↩

12. Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, 6 May 1854, p. 2.↩

13. See J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp: 111-13.↩

14. See the NSW Police Gazette, 2 January 1854.↩

15. See G. Serle, The Golden Age: a History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851-1861, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1977, pp 1-28.↩

16. See B. Moore, Cotter Country: a History of the Early Settlers, Pastoral Holdings and Events in and Around the County of Cowley, NSW, privately published, Yamba, 1999 (2006 reprint), pp. 183, 224.↩

THE CHINESE PRESENCE IN THE CANBERRA-QUEANBEYAN DISTRICT, PRE-1862, PART 1, by James McDonald

This is part of a series of articles on non-Anglo/Celtic migration to the Canberra-Queanbeyan district in the 1824-61 period. We have limited the investigation to the early colonial period, prior to the implementation of the Robertson land reforms in January 1862, which brought an influx of free selectors into the Canberra-Queanbeyan district and throughout NSW, dramatically altering the migration story.

PART ONE: Plans to exploit Chinese labour in the district, 1830s-40s[1]

(a) The consideration and development of exploitive Asian labour schemes

In the late 1830s, with convict transportation finishing in 1841, the colonial authorities were considering schemes to recruit alternative labour. It was apparent that they could not rely on free migrants arriving in the colony under their own means, as few within this group were happy to take long-term work on the frontier, let alone under demanding conditions and working for tight-fisted squatters and squires.[2] So, they had to consider subsidised models. This continued to be discussed in the consultations and submissions leading up to the NSW Government’s Report from the Committee on Immigration in 1841, which ultimately delivered the successful assisted passage scheme loosely based on the ‘bounty’ scheme, which had seen so many Irish and British migrants arrive. The usual arrangement was to pay their passage but see them indentured for six months or so upon arrival, receiving rations and a low wage.

In Queensland, where it was harder to attract European workers, the vile practice of ‘blackbirding’ started in the 1840s. It is not so surprising when we consider that slavery had only been abolished by the British in the 1830s. In other colonies, so-called Chinese or Indian ‘Coolies’ were recruited to fill the consequent labour void (e.g., on the Atlantic island of St Helena).[3] Hence, the Asian labour model had proved successful elsewhere in the empire and so there was increasing interest in testing it in NSW.

It was in these circumstances that serious consideration was given to replace convict labour with indentured workers from India and/or China.[4] Of course, this was one form of exploitation being replaced by another and the low cost to the employer explains why so many of the pastoralists supported the idea. But the authorities seemed to be concerned about large scale non-European migration. They also preferred the bounty scheme and its successor as curing two evils: (i) helping alleviate pauperism in Britain; and (ii) helping balance the convict/emancipist core in Australia with more free migrants who also came with a strong motivation to succeed. Hence, the idea of importing cheap Indian and Chinese labour was not taken up by the Government.

Nevertheless, the idea still had appeal to some entrepreneurs, interested in raising funds to recruit Chinese workers themselves. The Coolie Association of NSW was established to advocate for this model.[5] The first large, contracted group of Chinese labourers to arrive in the colony seems to have emigrated from Xiamen in Fujian Province per Nimrod in 1848. They were deployed to Kyeamba, south of Wagga Wagga.[6] Even before this, throughout the 1840s and well before the gold rush, a number of Chinese labourers had arrived in smaller informal groups or as individuals signed up in lop-sided employment contracts with conditions not much better than an assigned convict could expect

(b) Davidson’s ill-fated Chinese migration scheme, 1837-38

A very early ambitious private scheme, which had direct relevance to the Canberra-Queanbeyan district was the plan advocated by Gordon Forbes Davidson in 1837, to recruit Chinese labourers as indentured workers to NSW. He was targeting single male ‘Chinese mechanics and labourers’.

Davidson wanted to recruit up to 500 workers arriving at Singapore in ‘junks’ from China and then transport them in a separate British vessel to NSW.[7] His brother – either John or Andrew Davidson – would act as the agent in Singapore, which was the obvious entrepôt as it was so close to Australia and Hong Kong was not yet a colony.

By June 1837, Davidson had 57 of the most senior pastoralists from NSW listed as ‘subscribers’ to his scheme. Each paid £5 per worker in advance to cover up-front costs. In Davidson’s advertisements, he said that he expected the total costs on landing per head not to exceed £11-12. Collectively, these pastoralists had sought 335 workers. This was an average of 5.9 Chinese workers per pastoralist.

Davidson’s plan had three prominent squires of the Canberra-Queanbeyan district sign up and pay their deposits. They were Charles Campbell (two workers), George Thomas Palmer (three workers), and Thomas McQuoid (five workers).[8] Although these three men’s main properties were in our district, it does not necessarily mean that they were hoping to fill positions on Canberra-Queanbeyan properties. They could have been recruited for elsewhere. The low numbers subscribed by Campbell and Palmer also suggest that these more established squires were hoping to test the model before committing to anything more substantial.

George Thomas Palmer

Courtesy Hall Heritage Centre

Under Davidson’s model, the Chinese workers in NSW in their first year would be expected to work on rations alone – which makes it a form of direct slavery – and only in the second year of indenture would they earn £1 per month with rations, which Davidson claimed was an amount twice as much as they would be earning in Singapore. After the two-year indenture, Davidson said that ‘they would expect wages something nearly equal to what free Europeans get here’, but he goes on to say that pastoralists could expect most of these workers to move on and to be replaced by further indentured workers at little cost and that his plan was to secure further groups of Chinese workers each year to sate demand.[9]

Another interesting feature in the model was the expectation that workers were matched with jobs suiting their skills which he described as follows.

Carpenters, Cabinetmakers, Wheelwrights, Millers, Blacksmiths, Bricklayers and Brickmakers, Gardeners, Cooks, growers of Maize, Sugar, and Tobacco, and general labourers, I can with perfect safety recommend them. As Shepherds, I doubt whether they would answer.[10]

The last line, predicting a reluctance of them to engage as shepherds, basically rules them out as suitable for work on the large estates of the Canberra-Queanbeyan district. It seems strange that he had so many pastoralists subscribed, when shepherds were precisely the kind of workers they were after.

As it happened, the money for the advance payments was somehow lost in transit from Sydney to Singapore and the scheme died. Davidson had to reimburse the subscribers. In September 1838, all he managed to salvage was a cargo of sugar and a ‘sample’ of four Chinese workers, which seem to have been used by himself along with ‘six Bengal Coolies’ at the Maitland estate he was managing.[11] He did his best to restart the scheme but had no takers after the disaster that was his first attempt.[12] In his memoir of 1846, Davidson conveniently fails to mention the fiasco but cannot help to exhort his readers with the potential of a planned Chinese migration program, which he says could be administered out of the new colony of Hong Kong.[13]

(c) Report from the Committee on Immigration (1841) and its aftermath

Charles Campbell’s response to questions for the NSW Government’s Report from the Committee on Immigration has survived.[14] He described to the Committee in July 1841, what he thought was the best economic model and why his family had pursued a bounty model targeting British workers. The Campbells understood the lure and impact on tenure of good wages and were prepared to invest about £105 per two-years for a couple.[15] When questioned about cheap foreign labour from India and China, Campbell did not argue against it, but he was hardly enthusiastic, which is a little surprising given his reliance on Indian lascars on his own ships.[16] He was even less excited about the prospect of recruiting Aboriginal workers. He said, cynically that ‘it would not be found impossible gradually to convert the Aborigines of this country, a tribe of indolent hunters, into indolent shepherds’.[17] So, it seems that the Campbells preferred a model in which they were prepared to pay for what they considered high quality British workers whom they would encourage to settle. They had very few Irish and no non-Europeans employed. Their workforce was predominantly English with a large minority of Scots recruited from 1835.[18] In 1841, Charles Campbell knew that the financial crisis, was still not over, as he himself experienced when he was unable to meet the payments on Palmerville, but he was unwilling to cut costs by using Chinese labour.

Charles Campbell
Courtesy State Library of NSW

Interestingly, the main point that Campbell wanted to bring to the attention of the Committee on Immigration – which he repeats a few times in his evidence – was that the real economic impediment was not the cost of labour, but the price of land. He said labour shortages drove up the wages and an over-supply of land undermined lot values, yet the government was wasting effort in trying to dampen wages and making matters worse by inflating the price of the land it released, especially when land prices had plummeted during the last years of the 1838-42 drought and recession. Campbell’s criticism made sense, but it may also have seemed a little disingenuous to the Committee, as the Campbells had managed to accumulate a virtual ‘dukedom’ with little difficulty, and there was never any serious dearth of buyers in the good years.[19]

Endnotes

1. Please note that offensive racist terms used in the period are included in this article. This study builds on what I have already written in J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 255-6, 290, 319-22; J. McDonald, J. Canberra: III. Pastoral Plutocracy (1862-1906), Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 200-5. That original work benefited from information generously shared by Monica Tankey in 2022-23. I also appreciate the detailed feedback of Ann Tündern-Smith, who is editing the series. Information was also shared by Joanne Maples and Tony Maple on a number of Chinese residents in the Goulburn and Braidwood areas, even though these towns are outside what we have defined as the Canberra-Queanbeyan district.↩

2. M. Darnell, ‘Indentured Chinese Labour: Squatters’ Salvation or Society’s Ruination?’, Queensland History Journal, vol. 25.4, 2023, p. 327 (re: G. F. Davidson, Trade and Travel in the Far East: or, Recollections of Twenty-one Years Passed in Java, Singapore, Australia, and China, Madden, London, 1846, p. 200).↩

3. T. H. Brooke, History of the Island of St. Helena: From Its Discovery by the Portuguese to the Year 1823, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, London, 1824, pp. 377, 381-2.↩

4. See G. Wilson, Murray of Yarralumla, Tabletop Press, Canberra, 1968 (revised edition, 2001), pp. 258-9.↩

5. Australasian Chronicle, 27 September 1842, p. 2. Also note the Australian Association of Bengal, which supported the recruitment of Indian ‘native servants’.↩

6. M. E. Tankey, ‘Chinese Part of Canberra-Queanbeyan Scene Since 1863’, Canberra Historical Journal, vol. 8 (September), 1981, p. 43.↩

7. There were other British colonial administrators with similar ideas who were using their personal connections with Singapore to advocate for Chinese labour in the empire (e.g., John Crawfurd, James Alexander Steward-Mackenzie). See A. Datta, Review of ‘Stan Neal, Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819-67’, Britain and the World, vol. 14:2, 2021, p. 192. ↩

8. I was first made aware of their involvement by Tony Maple and thank him for this lead. ↩

9. All these conditions are set out in Sydney Herald, 19 June 1837, p. 4; 22 June 1837, p. 4; 26 June 1837, p. 4. Cf. Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser, 15 June 1837, p. 2. A misreported summary is in Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, 19 July 1837, p. 3. ↩

10. Sydney Herald, 26 June 1837, p. 4. ↩

11. G. F. Davidson, Trade and Travel in the Far East: or, Recollections of Twenty-one Years Passed in Java, Singapore, Australia, and China, Madden, London, 1846, p. 205; Sydney Herald, 9 July 1838, p. 1; Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, 14 September 1838, p. 3. Also see Davidson’s letter of 29 January 1838, published in Sydney Herald, 28 June 1838, p. 4. ↩

12. See his letter dated 12 May 1838 published a year later in Sydney Herald, 3 May 1839, p. 2. ↩

13. G. F. Davidson, Trade and Travel in the Far East: or, Recollections of Twenty-one Years Passed in Java, Singapore, Australia, and China, Madden, London, 1846, pp. 203-5. ↩

14. Also see the Campbell papers in the NSW State Library: ML A3587 (with M. Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, 1835-1851, Melbourne University Press. Parkville. 1965, pp. 47, 71-4).↩

15. E.g., see the remuneration of Edward and Mary Smith in 1852 (W. J. M. Campbell, Four Pioneers of the Limestone Plains: Edward Smith, born 1822, died 1888, Mary Smith, born 1818, died 1907, Matthias Smith, born 1817, died 1903, William Kilby, born 1811, died 1902, Federal Capital Press, Canberra, 1955, p. 12).↩

16. See J. K. S. Houison, ‘Robert Campbell and the Wharf’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 23.1, 1937, p. 1. ↩

17. See §12 of the NSW Government’s Report from the Committee on Immigration, 1841. ↩

18. On the detail and mythology attached to the putative Scottish shepherd model at Duntroon, see J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 252-8. ↩

19. The ‘dukedom’ criticism comes from John Lhotsky (A Journey from Sydney to the Australian Alps Undertaken in the Months of January, February and March 1834, R. Ackerman’s Repository of Arts, London, 1835, p. 68; with J. McDonald, Canberra: II. Colonisation (1824-1861), second edition, Sorley Boy, Melbourne, 2025, pp. 170-1). The wealth of the Campbells seems to have earned them mistrust and envy (e.g., S. Shumack, S. [ed. J. E. and S. Shumack], 1967 [1977 reprint], An Autobiography, or, Tales and Legends of Canberra Pioneers, ANU Press, Canberra ,1967, p. 141). ↩