The Palmer River Gold Field 1873-1883 Noreen Suzanne Kirkman B.A Hon.Thesis
History Dept JCU March 1984
Chapter 5: THE CHINESE
"There would never have been a Chinese
question in Queensland had it not been for
the discovery of the Palmer River Goldfield."
J.M. Macrossan 1883
The Chinese influx to the Palmer occurred in two phases. Early in the rush, there was a steady arrival of Chinese from other parts of Australia, many of them old hands from southern gold fields. Suddenly in 1875 a damburst of immigrants direct from China occurred, utterly overwhelming the European miners and the gold field administration. While the Chinese were familiar and contentious figures on many Australian mining fields, never before had they achieved such complete or sudden dominance, and their presence not only impinged on the conduct of affairs on the Palmer, but also on colonial policy making in both Brisbane and London. Their influx was one of the most drastic episodes in the history of immigration on the Australian continent, although the evidence stemming from it is slight, comprising only two first-hand accounts by participants, and a farrago of unsympathetic and condemnatory statements by Europeans. Even at the time, their impact on both Queensland legislation and folklore was recognized. As J.M. Macrossan told the Legislative Assembly:
"There would never have been a Chinese question in Queensland had it not been for the discovery of the Palmer River Goldfield."1
When news of the Palmer rush broke late in 1873, a correspondent to the Queenslander confidently forecast that it would be the "best Field ever opened in Queensland for Chinese."2 These comments implied that the patchy but extensive alluvial find would suit the careful methods of the Chinese; it was also widely rumoured, however, that violence would erupt if they came. The mood of the European miners concerned Howard St George:
"I have heard that some Chinese are on their way here and I fear if they intend to dig that there will be a disturbance between them and the European miners." 3
The Chinese came, but the anticipated violence did
not. At first their numbers were few, mostly gardeners. 4 But as the Europeans moved to a new ground on
Sandy Creek and the
Mitchell Fall in June 1874, a Chinese rush
1. QPD XLI (13 February 1884), p.357.
2. Q 13 December 1873.
3. St George to Sec Works &Mines 19 December 1873, 74/122 WOR/A 77 QSA
4. A Chinese gardener had already planted vegetables on the banks of the river by November 1873. Palmer correspondent 2 November 1873, Q 13 December 1873.
began in earnest to those places where gold was first discovered: the main river bed east from Palmerville, and up the Left Hand Branch to German Bar.5 Chinese tin-miners from Stanthorpe clambered on trains for Brisbane to join a north-bound steamer,6 and Wing On and Company of Townsville and the Etheridge extended their trading services to the Palmer. 7 Cooktown, in particular, felt the effects of the incoming Chinese rush with the arrival of Chinese doctors, hoteliers, store keepers and merchants.8 Chinese business prospered in the major settlements on the Palmer and by October 1874 there was even a Chinese temple presided over by Dr. King Chong.9 Another exodus by Europeans to the Normanby River late in 1874 had opened up other areas to the Chinese, at Stony, Fine Gold and Sandy Creeks. By the end of the year there were 1,500 Chinese on the Palmer, almost 40 per cent of the field population.10
A new phase in the Chinese rush came with the arrival in Cooktown of steamers from overseas ports. The Queensland government had entered into a contract establishing a regular steamship service from Singapore, to be run by the Eastern and Australian Mail Service Steamship Company (E &A Line). Its first scheduled service coincided with the initial rush to the Palmer. E & A then extended the north- bound route through Cooktown and to Hong Kong.11 However before the
5. St George to Min Works &Mines 6 July 1874, 74/3803.WOR/A 88 QSA.
6. Q 8 August 1874.
7. CH 8 July, 5 August 1874.
8. Chinese advertisements in the Cooktown newspapers from May to August 1874 indicate the momentum of the rush.
9. Q 3 October 1874.
10. QV&P 1876, 2, p.338; CC 21 December 1874.
11. In April 1873 a contract for a steamship service to operate from Brisbane was signed by the government and the following signatories: James Henderson of Bright Brothers and Company of Brisbane and Melbourne; James Guthrie of a Singapore merchant house; William McTaggart and P.F. Tidman of McTaggart, Tidman & Company. ASR 2, 3 (1971) pp.71-2. For correspondence on the establishment of the Torres Strait Mail Service see: 74/516 & 74/612 COL/A 193 QSA.
first E &A steamer berthed in Cooktown, the ASN Victoria arrived from Hong Kong under charter on 30 January 1875 with two hundred Chinese passengers. The Victoria was closely followed by the E &A Singapore and the P & 0 Adria in March, bringing Chinese numbers from overseas ports to almost two thousand within two months.12 The Chinese population on the Palmer swelled to over 9,000 in July 1875, dropping to approximately 6,000 just prior to the wet season.13 Early the following year Sellheim was advised that “6 large steamers”14 had taken on passengers from Hong Kong, including one steamer belonging to the Hopkee (Coalition) Company which was planning to run a monthly service between Cooktown and Hong Kong. The first Hopkee vessel steamed into Cooktown on 14 March, 15 just as news of the discovery of payable gold on the Hodgkinson was filtering through. As the Hodgkinson rush caused the Palmer to be largely abandoned by Europeans, one writer recommended facetiously that the latter field should be
12. On 20 March Singapore and Adria berthed simultaneously bringing another 800 Chinese. The Namoi and Egeria arrived in early April, with a total of 1,272, followed by the Japan and Scotland in early April, with another 2,190 Chinese. Q 20 February, 27 March, 2 & 17 April, 8 May, 17 July 1875; see also CC 27 March 1875 &CH 10 April 1875. All steamers, except the Singapore, were under charter. The Hong Kong firm, G.R. Stevens and Co., had chartered the P & 0 Adria and possibly the Victoria. The principal charterers were to the account of Chinese merchants in Hong Kong and Canton, but were arranged through British merchant houses in the Far East. The Egeria was German owned. ASR 2, 4 (1971) pp.112-3. However Sing-Wu Wang has claimed that no Australian or European capitalist was connected with Chinese emigration. See Sing-Wu Wang, The Organization of Chinese Emigration, 1848-1888, with special reference to Chinese emigration to Australia (MA thesis, Australian National University 1969), p.113.
13. Sellheim estimated that the maximum total population during June-July 1875 was "probably not less than 12000". Sellheim to Sec Works & Mines 12 January 1876, 76/12 CPS 13B/G1 QSA. See also CH 18 August 1875 & Se11heim to Sec Works &~tines 1 November 1875, 75/339
CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
14. Sellheim to Sec Mines 12 March 1876, 76/59 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
15. Q 8 January, 18 March 1876; CH 8 January, 8 March 1876. The firm Hopkee (Coalition) was largely dependent on the support of Chinese businessmen in Australia. Sing-Wu Wang, Organization of Chinese Emigration, p.l02; K. Cronin, The Chinese in Queensland in the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Racial Interaction (BA Hons thesis University of Queensland 1970), p.137.
renamed "New Canton" or "New Hong Kong".16 Chinese immigration gained momentum from this chain of events, and steamers now began to arrive weekly: the E &A line put into service a new and powerful.17 steamer, the Queensland. A little over a year later there were approximately 18,000 Chinese on the Palmer.18
The majority of Chinese were from different districts in south Kwangtung province, speaking either Sze-Yap or Sam-Yap dialects.19 Most were from agricultural communities: farmers, gardeners, labourers, butchers and a few scholars.20 The rural provinces of southern China were not traditionally outward-looking, but over several decades had come to accept a social pattern of short-term emigration cut across older practices of kinship obligation. Historians have identified political unrest and natural disasters as the stimuli behind the diaspora of Cantonese to the mineral fields of Malaya, North America, and Australasia in the second half of the nineteenth century. For alluvial mining was an ideal industry, offering lucrative returns for labour-intensive production methods, and requiring little initial capital. However, participation in overseas mining was not intended to lead to permanent population movement; it was tolerated in Kwangtung within the tenets of family responsibility which demanded
16. CH 26 April 1876.
17. Q 8 April 1876.
18. AB 1877 p.9.
19. C.R. May, The Chinese in Cairns and District 1876-1920 (PhD thesis, James Cook University of North Queensland 1977), p.17; C.A. Price,
The Great White Walls are Built (Canberra 1974), pp.219-221;
C.Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in AustraZia (Sydney, 1975),
pp.78-80 and A. Buck, The Chinese Settlement in Australia
(Croydon, 1968), pp.5-24. Taam Sze Pui and his family came from
Ny Chuen in Namhoi, a Sam Yap district. Taam Sze Pui, My Life and
Work (Innisfail 1925), p.44; Chinese with names such as Wong, Ching, Chong, and Liu, would have been associated with Sze Yap immigrants.
Choi, Chinese Migration, pp. 78-80.
20. James McHenley, who went to school in Honan, met a Chinese miner who had been a classmate of his, and another, by the name of Wong, who had received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Canton, and was an expert on comparative government systems.
CH 21 June, 5 July 1876. N G,
Map of Southern Kwantung Province, showing boundaries of:
Sze Yap (Four districts) --------
Sam Yap (Three districts) ••••••••
(Price, C.A., The Great White Walls are BuiIt (Canberra, 1974), endpapers.)
that the miner return with his earnings to support his relatives.21 Impoverished farmers, such as Taam Sze Pui, were easily tempted by emigration agents who described the Palmer as a place where gold, was "inexhaustible and free to all." 22 Queensland after 1873 offered an added incentive insofar that there was no longer an export duty on gold. 23 The Chinese came mostly in kinship groups; only a few came individually, or as contract labourers. It has been frequently claimed that the Chinese were subject to coercive indentureships, but James McHenley, an Anglo-Chinese linguist at Cooktown and the Palmer in 1875-6, rejected any suggestion that they were not free agents:
…the great majority of Chinese are not peons or tributers, but working for themselves. There are a number who have been brought here by their friends under agreement to work for a certain time to pay the expenses incurred.24
They were, however, bound by social obligations centred on family loyalty and ancestral worship, and were expected to send profits home, then ultimately to return themselves.
Newcomers were both excited and bewildered on their arrival: "A hundred voices began to ask many questions about the 'gold hills' which is the name they give to the Palmer gold-fields viz. Kim San."25 Away from their families, Chinese immigrants relied on members of kinship and district groups for mutual aid.26 J. Dundas Crawford, a visitor to
21. Taam Sze Pui described the devastation brought about by floods in Kwangtung province: Taam Sze Pui, My Life, p.2; James McHenley claimed that sheer hunger had led others to emigrate: Q 22 May 1875. For further discussion of the background to Chinese migration see Cronin, Chinese Question, p.15 and May, Chinese in Cairns, pp.96-99.
22. Taam Sze Pui, My Life, p.9.
23. See Schedules of Taxes, Duties, Fees, Rents, Assessments and all other Sources of Revenue, tabulated in QV&P 1874, 2, p.11. The Colonial Treasurer was reluctant to reintroduce this duty, as it was opposed by miners, who saw it as a discriminatory "class" tax. Col Treasurer QPD XX (9 August 1876), p.466.
24. CH 19 May 1875.
25. CH 18 June 1876.
26. May, Chinese in Cairns, p.111.
Cooktown in September in 1877, noted the existence of "mining captains" who supervised the purchase of equipment and "guides" who directed new arrivals to accommodation-houses run by different organizations, including the Sheathed Sword Society or to a camp outside of town known as "Chinatown".27 At a more formal level mutual aid took the form of either social guilds or voluntary groups which extracted a levy for benevolent purposes. The objectives of one guild operating in Cooktown in 1875 passed on from previous experience in Australia and California. were as follows:
1. To secure passages to and from the gold fields of Australia and California.
2. To build club-houses at the seaports and inland. where required.
3. To pay the passages of members to China. When unable to work through sickness or accident.
4. To bury the dead who die without the means to defray the expenses of burial.
5. To purchase mining property.
6. To pay the expenses of lawsuits where the interests or honor of the guild is concerned.
7. To pay for repair of club-houses.
8. To pay incidental expenses. 28
The most conspicuous building in Cooktown's Chinese quarter in 1877 was the "Garden of Gold Valleys" hall, which, according to Dundas Crawford was ''kept by Nampan citizens". It not only provided lodgings but also entertainment: "From 10 to 12 at night its doors are thronged with orderly silent crowds. Five to six zittars and drums give theatrical music gratis."29 But there were few regulars in the listening crowds, for most arrivals left as soon as they could for the diggings.
In groups and generally in single file, the new-chum Chinese' miners made the journey to the Palmer on foot, their equipment and provisions strung on poles or shovels across their shoulders:
Starting from Cooktown for the Palmer, some hundred of the new arrivals-were travelling thither, each
27. J. Dundas-Crawford. Notes on Chinese Immigration in the
Australian Colonies, part 2, pp.27-28, enclosure FO 17/891 PRO.
28. Listed by James McHenley, Q 22 May 1875.
29. Dundas-Crawford, Notes, p.29. FO 17/891 PRO.
marching in succession one after the other, in like manner to China, where the roads are narrow, and not used by wheeled vehicles. Notwithstanding the breadth of the dray road, one seldom sees them marching abreast. The bamboo carrying-poles are in most places discarded, and their places supplied with long-handled shovels; some are carrying loads of provisions, some carrying tools, some carrying fowls, While four of the crowd were carrying in baskets a number of little pigs, who were asking if they were to be kept any longer than a "week" in their cages. 160 pounds weight was the average load, carried by each individual, though some had more, one of Which I weighed at Mr Christesen's store, at the Four-mile Camp, and found it 255 pounds. What loads for single individuals, to carry such long distances, and over such rough roads? And yet they managed at times to travel upwards of thirty miles in a day and to beat our pack horses.30
Taam Sze Pui's first trip to the Palmer was very long and harrowing indeed, and it seems probable that his group became lost, for it took them a month to go 83 kilometres. The party was in constant fear of an attack by cannibalistic Aborigines: "The fear of such a fate kept one and all together and no one dare tarry behind to rest or to regain his breath." Experiencing almost unbearable heat, they eventually arrived on the field exhausted and completely out of provisions. Lacking also the necessary knowledge to carry out mining, Taam Sze Pui's party had to turn to a more experienced compatriot, Kwok Lung, who instructed them how to make a living. Indeed, Taam gave several instances where kinship support was forthcoming. When illness beset the party, one Chan Poon came to their aid. Then when the cost of treating Taam's father exceeded their savings, a relative mortgaged the family house and remitted the amount (£32) through Man Chuen' s pearl shop in Canton, which was passed on to Man Chuen On in Cooktown to be collected. 31
30. CH 21 June 1876.
31. Taam Sze Pui, My Life, pp.12, 14, 16-21.
The Chinese miners worked with determination and intelligence. Because systematic working of large areas, and communal pooling of earnings, served to insulate the Chinese from the notoriously irregular returns, which made alluvial mining so unpredictable a livelihood for individual European miners, a large group of Chinese diggers working cooperatively and living frugally could be assured of a long period of production in almost any part of the Palmer. It also afforded them the luxury of more in turn often led to rewarding finds. "safest and surest", 32 were characterized by co-operation, thoroughness and physical mobility. Individual Chinese could work towards securing "a fair share", permitting them "to resist more strongly a run of ill luck than the Europeans."33 When beset by a bad return, the poorer miners would then rely on "the most fortunate of their countrymen for support",34 with subscriptions sometimes being collected and relief kitchens being set up.35 Of mining methods, co-operative cradling was preferred, with two digging, two carrying wash dirt, two cradling and the remainder bagging gold. At night, blowing and weighing would conclude the daily routine.36 The whole area of the claim was scoured, and re-worked three to four times,37 unless a more profitable find was located. European observers dismissed the success of this patient and logical approach as "luck". One newspaper correspondent noted:
The Chinese are everywhere ...and as by their system of work, they take everything "on the face", instead of only working the most likely spots, as is the case of Europeans, their
32. Q 29 March 1879.
33. Q 9 October 1875.·
34. Farrelly to Under Sec Mines 7 January 1879, 79/5 MWO 13A/G1 QSA.
35. CH 31 June 1876; Q 11 September 1875.
36. Q 29 March 1879.
37. Continual references were made to re-working. See AR 1877 p.1;
Sellheim to Sec Mines 10 February & 1 March 1877, 77/37 &
77/46 MWO 13B/G1 QSA; Q 26 February 1876, 17 March 1877.
perseverance is naturally rewarded - in an essentially patchy diggings - with an occasional lucky find. There is an impression on the field that at least three fourths of the gold falls to the lot of Chinamen. 38
During the drier part of the year the Chinese dammed gullies and drained waterholes for washdirt,39 as well as resorting to dry blowing. 40 At first the Chinese were content to work only those areas abandoned by Europeans but, during 1875, Chinese prospectors ventured into unexplored country and made payable discoveries. In late July-August 1875, there was a rush to the Kennedy Fall of the Conglomerate Range, initiated by Chinese. While traces of gold in the area were believed to have been found by Europeans, it was Chinese prospectors who first realized payable gold.41 This success encouraged further prospecting, and good finds by Chinese miners kept gold buyers busy.42
To carry out their ventures, some Chinese miners relied on credit. Under the creditor-debtor system that developed, in which kinship or district allegiances also played a part, a Chinese businessman would provide a miner with equipment on credit, as well as acting as his gold-buyer and supplier of provisions. One Lukinville storekeeper supplied the capital required for a whole party of
38. Q 26 February 1876.
39. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 4 October 1877, 77/208 MWO 13B/G1 QSA; Binnie, My Life, p.35.
40. Q 2 October 1875.
41. Fagan and party were apparently the discoverers, but found the overlying sandstone too difficult to penetrate, and, it was claimed, sold out to the Chinese miners for £60. Sellheim to Sec Works &Mines 12 January 1876, 76/12 CPS 13B/G1 QSA; See also CH 22 September 1875 & Q 28 August 1875.
42. After only a few months, during late 1875, some Chinese miners were able to make a "few hundred ounces" of gold, and one firm of gold buyers alone received 400 ounces in one week. The Fyen and Brisbane left for Hong Kong in early October 1875, with gold amounting to 14,000 ounces and one eighty ounce nugget on board. Q 25 September, 16 & 23 October 1875; CC 9 October 1875; CH 15 August 1876.
miners to pump out the waterholes in the river during the dry season.43 In depressed conditions, storekeepers even paid for the licence fees of reliable customers until mining conditions improved.44 Once a miner had obtained enough gold to cover expenses it would be exchanged by the storekeeper, who as unofficial banker, received large amounts of gold in exchange for merchandise. However, these systematic methods only served to intensify the resentment among European miners of the Chinese presence on the field.
There were several early attempts in mid-1874 to "excite the miners to violent resistance" against the Chinese working the Left Hand Branch and beaches downstream from German Bar to Palmerville. However Howard St George reported that "the miners have taken no notice of the illegal councils of these men, and the goldfield continues in its usual peaceable state ...".45 When the rush to the Normanby River petered out about March 1875, Europeans returned to Sandy Creek, and again tried to jostle the Chinese out. A sign was nailed to a tree at Sandy Creek, with the warning: "Any Chinaman found higher up this creek will be instantly seized and hanged until “he is dead."46 Sellheim reported two "collisions" between two different parties, but commented at the time that he did not expect any further trouble as long as he was "successful in keeping the two interests separate."47 When Chinese prospectors initiated the rush to the Conglomerate in July 1875, they were promptly joined by 1,000 Europeans, who, under the circumstances, made no attempt to wrest claims from the discoverers. Nevertheless, by late 1875, Sellheim could sense a dangerous level of antagonism on the part of European miners:
43. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 30 June 1879, 79/164 MWO 13B/G2 QSA.
44. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 March & 2 May 1878, 78/48 & 78/95 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
45. St George to Sec Works &Mines 13 July 1874, 74/3730 WOR/A 88 QSA.
46. Communicatee to editor, CC 22 May 1875.
47. Sellheim to Sec Works &Mines 4 April & 14 May 1875, 75/125 & 75/172 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
…the very strong feeling that exists here against the Chinese, and the intensity of which is increasing daily at the same rate as this class of population is flocking-in. I am only too sensible to the fact, that any day some trifling event may fan the smouldering fire into a blaze, and in such a case the want of an experienced officer in charge of Police would be felt very much."48
A major cause of Sellheim's anxiety was the re-distribution of the population. To the end of September 1875, there had been "a strict line of demarcation" between Chinese and European miners, with Oaky and Sandy Creeks predominantly European workings.49 However, in September and October, a number of Europeans left the field, either to follow a hear-say rush near Cooktown, or to retire from the PaImer permanently, as the field was no longer able to offer an easy profit. As claims were taken up by Chinese in the vicinity of Oaky Creek, Sellheim's worst fear was about to be tested, for both groups were now "indiscriminately mixed up in all directions." 51 During November, the Chinese slowly penetrated the Sandy Creek watershed, where six months earlier a sign had banned their entry. Opposition was minimal; the Chinese were careful of confrontation: "In the few instances where they were opposed by Europeans & ordered off by them, the Chinamen, retired without any resistance."52 By mid-March 1876, most of the Palmer proper was in the hands of Chinese: the primary concentration of European miners had moved to the vicinity of Fine Gold Creek and the Little Mitchell River. Reviewing the situation on the Palmer, Sellheim suggested that a new gold field be established in order to supervise the European population, now distant from Maytown:
The portion nearest to Edwtown is very nearly worked out, as far as Europeans are concerned,
48. Sellheim to Col Sec Works 23 March 1875, 75/1091 COL/A 208 QSA.
49. Sellheim to Sec Works & Mines 12 January 1876, 76/12 CPS 13B/G1
QSA.
50. Sellheim to Sec Works &Mines 1 October & 1 November 1875. 751304 & 751399 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
51. Q 11 December 1875.
52. Sellheim to Sec Works &Mines 14 December 1875, 751376 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
& before long will be entirely in the hands of the Chinese. The white population is daily drawing out farther towards Mitchell waters, & when you may consider it necessary to divide the present P.R.G. into separate Fields, I would have the liberty to point out to you that Fine Gold Creek, or the Little Mitchell will be more convenient as a central position for the camp of the Warden of the new G.F.53
A new gold field was eventually established, not on Fine Gold Creek, but on the Hodgkinson, to where almost all of the European alluvial miners had moved within the month.
After the first flush of excited activity on the Hodgkinson, a large number of returning Europeans attempted to hunt Chinese off their claims on Sandy, Fine Gold and Stony Creeks by finding loopholes in the mining regulations. As Sellheim wrote:
Some little difficulty has arisen in few instances during the month between returned European diggers and the Chinese. The latter very rarely have any pegs in, and Europeans wishing to take any advantage of this Breach of the Regulations, have been prevented from doing so by numerical supremacy of the Chinese. I do not however anticipate any serious difficulties on this account, as the exemplary punishment of few of the offences, will teach the Chinese that they cannot commit any Breach of the Regulations with impunity.54
Sellheim's adherence to the letter of the law, far from harassing the Chinese, served ultimately to entrench them in their new districts, for in making the Chinese more aware of the necessity of marking claims clearly, Sellheim unconsciously eliminated the only means by which many returning Europeans could reclaim ground. In carrying out the regulations, the gold field administration was bound to protect the Chinese miner, a development which a correspondent to the Queenslander recorded:
The Chinese, who have now occupied the pick of the field, have not only possession, which is nine-tenths of the law, but they are absolutely
53. Sellheim to Sec Mines 13 March 1876, 76/70 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
54. Sellheim to Sec Mines 5 July 1876, 76/142 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
and incontestably within their lawful rights....the arm of the law, even if it is not raised to support them, cannot at any rate smite them; that in fact it will not be they who are law breakers, but those who annoy and disturb.55
However, there was one instance of conscious discrimination on Sellheim's part. As the gold field administration was seriously understaffed, he attempted to lessen the likelihood of disputes among Chinese. Using his discretionary power as warden, he decided to restrict Chinese to ordinary claims, reasoning that extended claims, if granted, would lock up the ground and become the basis of disputes. His advice to Dorsey on extended claims was:
I have not considered it advisable to grant any to Chinese for many reasons as these claims so far were only granted to Europeans. I have set my face against making any formal transfers to Chinese, & as far as I am concerned shall uphold the same rule hereafter. With the number of Chinamen at present on the field, I would consider it most unwise to lock up the ground.56
The object of Sellheim's action was to keep the peace. He was adamant that no other restriction should be imposed on the livelihood of the Chinese. When Dorsey proposed a restriction on water rights, Sellheim pointed out in strong terms that the "only difference as between Europeans and Chinese, ever authorized by me, the refusal of extended claims to the latter." However, as Europeans began to leave the field during the latter part of 1876, some Chinese miners came into extended claims. This they did, warned Sellheim, "at their risk".57
By far the most pressing problem facing the gold field administration was the collection of payments for miners' rights. Sellheim came under a great deal of pressure from Under Secretary Lukin to "use every exertion" to keep revenue collection in proportion to the incoming Chinese population: 8,000 in May 1876. In conveying this instruction to an assistant warden, Sellheim patiently explained: "I have there-
55. Q 11 December 1875.
56. Sellheim to Dorsey 24 May 1876, 76/119 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
57. Sellheim to Dorsey 6 November 1876, 76/243 & 13 November 1876, 76/253 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
fore to ask you to be good enough to use all time that can possibly be spared from other duties, in looking up the Chinese, and particularly in the more distant camps from Oakey Creek."58 A year later, when the Chinese numbered between 16,000 and 17,000, Lukin was still urging that even more time be spent collecting revenue, adding that this was to be done "without undue violence".59 It was up to the individual warden how he interpreted this instruction.
The gold field staff found it difficult to keep pace with the rapid increase in the Chinese population, especially the years 1876-1877. Some of the newcomers evaded payment of miners' rights, but in this respect, Sellheim opined, the Chinese "don't differ vastly from the Europeans."60 Admittedly, the language barrier was a problem, although translations of the Gold Fields Act were displayed periodically. More serious, however, was the existence of a blatant breach in the issue of miners' rights to Chinese which remained undetected for several months and no doubt contributed to Chinese resistance to and distrust of the revenue collection system. At the height of Chinese immigration, Sellheim was appalled to discover that Hill had issued more slips of paper to Chinese instead of prescribed forms for miners' rights, and strongly reprimanded the assistant warden for the carelessness of his action.
As the practice of issuing such slips of paper is against the spirit of the Audit Act & in direct contradiction of especial instructions on the subject, &. as it may be means of defrauding the Revenue by orderlies, or in fact any body outside the Gold-fields Service, I request that on no account hereafter any such receipts for "money forms to issue" may be given by you or those under
58. Se1lbeim to Dorsey 6 May 1876, 76/106 CPS 13B/G1 QSA.
59. G. Lukin to Sellheim 24 May 1877, QV&P 1878, 2, p.291.
60. AR 1878 p.17.
61. See Hill to Insp Mine. 1 May 1876, 76/21 MWO 13A/G1 &Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 4 November 1876, 76/241 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
your orders, as the Chinamen presenting them are evidently under the impression that the Documents, per se, are Miner's Rights.62
The gross irregularity of this practice led to serious confrontations between other gold field staff and Chinese, the latter believing they were legally licensed.
Faced with official pressure to improve revenue collection, some wardens began to rely more and more on Aboriginal trackers to collect revenue from Chinese. Hill admitted to using his trackers to "run them down", in addition to recruiting Native Police to join the field party.63 Former Sub-Inspector Douglas was later to confirm that his detachment was used to "draft" out Chinese.
The procedure was for the gold-warden to apply to the officer in command of the nearest native police detachment for the services of his troopers; and the combined forces of the warden, consisting of himself, two white orderlies, two or three trackers, and the native police officer and his troopers, would divide forces and sweep down certain creeks and gullies, meeting at some fixed camp of the Chinese, where a drafting would take place. Those Chinese without licences were separated from those with; but all the gold found on either party was collected and marked -- that found on the delinquents being made to pay first for the miners' rights required, together with a fine of £1; but if sufficient gold was not found on them the remainder had to be made up by their comrades, any balance in either case being handed back to the owners or bosses, who really were the culprits, and who could, therefore, settle the matter as they liked.64
How widespread this use of terror tactics is unknown, however neither Hill nor Douglas were condemned for their actions, although Native Police were not sanctioned to carry out gold field duty. When agents
62. Sellheim to Hill 17 July 1876, 76/156 CPS 13B/G1 QSA. Bill was questioned regarding other aspects of his work in relation to Chinese: neglecting to inquire into deaths, levying excessive fines, and impounding property for non-payment of fees. See variously, Sellheim to Hill 20 September 1877, 77/193 MWO 13B/G1, Hill to Sellheim 3 October 1877, 77/170 &Hill to Under Sec Mines 1 March 1877, 77/22 MWO 13A/G1 QSA.
63. Hill to Under Sec Mines 18 April 1877, 77/53 MWO 13A/G1 QSA.
64. Douglas Douglas, First Chinese Invasion, p.93.
for Sun Yee Lee complained to the Colonial Secretary that Chinese had been assaulted by Native Troopers collecting revenue, the matter was dismissed on the grounds that "no native police [were] employed under Gold Fields Wardens in collecting fees or in any other way."65
More conspicuous in his treatment of Chinese was Thomas Coward. He carried out Lukin's instruction to an extreme degree, and was ‘universally hated by the Chinese".66 A junior colleague of Coward's, Senior Sergeant Devine, claimed officially that "Mr Coward thinks nothing of knocking down an unfortunate Chinaman, and commits actions not all according to Law."67 Coward was senior enough for Devine's comments to be dismissed. However, his conduct became so oppressive, that it was eventually the subject of two government inquiries, in early 1876 and late 1877.68 In the first inquiry specific cases of assault, unlawful imprisonment, excessive fining, and obvious neglect Chinese under Coward's supervision were cited. Among them was the case of a Chinese Storekeeper named Louis, who, without provocation and guiltless himself of any crime, had been beaten with a whip handle, and on another occasion handcuffed to a tree, whipped and released only on payment of £10. Louis described this and other incidents as typical of Coward's general behaviour towards the Chinese; Coward however was absolved of these charges.
65. Annotation of J.C. Hodel for Sun Yee Lee & other Chinamen Storekeepers to Col Sec 18 October 1877, 77/4973 COLIA 246 QSA.
66. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 28 October 1877, 77/248 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
67. Devine to Comm Police 9 February 1876, 76/560 COLIA 219 QSA.
68. Resignation of Mr. Coward, Late Warden on the Palmer Gold Field, QV&P 1878, 2, pp.281-93.
It was Coward's ill-treatment of Europeans which assisted in bringing about a second inquiry, the following year. Professional and business Chinese claimed that Coward harassed newly arrived immigrants and coerced them into renewal of unexpired miners' rights: some of which were the slips of paper supplied by Hill. Furthermore, he forced other Chinese miners to pay for the licences of their companions, wilfully destroyed the property of defaulters, and physically assaulted several Chinese, in some cases cutting off their traditional queue, or pigtail. European businessmen complained to the inquiry that "the Chinamen take their custom to other places, or, in fact, shift to other portions of the goldfield." This time Coward was found unsuitable for the post of Warden, and dismissed. The decision was by no means unanimous, for Thomas McIlwraith was later to praise Coward as "the only warden who did his duty in collecting revenue from the Chinese." 69
The removal of Coward nonetheless highlights a measure of support from some sections of the European community for Chinese businessmen, no doubt due to the commercial interests they represented. Because of their wealth, Europeans tended to confer upon them a greater degree of respect and status than they did on the Chinese miner. Quong Nam Chong, the owner of one of the largest businesses on the Palmer, is a case in point, for he amassed an average of £400-500 a week. 70 Tam Sie, who arrived on the field in 1875, had £15,000 in cash and £500 in assets by the time he left the Palmer four years later.71 Chinese had early maximized their financial security with a monopoly over coin; they even set up their own bank. 72 When European banks were later established, the Chinese divided their custom between the two main
69. QPD XXXIII (4 November 1880), p.1317.
70. J .W. Elcoate to General Manager 23 August 1880, BR/QNB/032 NBA.
71. Tam. Sie, Memoirs, Document 1532 ML•.
72. CC 4 August 1875. It was Tennent Shields who established the Queensland National Bank's branch on the Palmer early in 1876 and noted the existence of the Chinese bank on his arrival. Tennent Shields to General Manager 1 June 1876, BR/QNB/032 NBA.
branches, the storekeepers preferring the Queensland National and the butchers the Bank of New South Wales. 71 The Q.N. considered its Chinese customers "perfectly safe" and up to 1882, readily gave advances to them. 74 The value of these customers was evident in the suspension of an acting manager, W.B. Kent, for indiscreetly inducing a Chinese storekeeper to remove his account. 75
All major settlements on the Palmer after 1874 were dominated by Chinese businessmen. While there were herbalists, opium-dealers, and gambling-housekeepers who catered for Chinese specifically, most Chinese businesses duplicated services already provided by their European counterparts. There were Chinese butchers, cooks and bakers, along with blacksmiths and carpenters. There were even publicans who accommodated the Chinese by selling opium as well as alcohol. In Maytown, there were as many stores run by Chinese as there were by Europeans, but not surprisingly, fewer hotels. 76 While this apparent duplication of business operations suggests that there was a demand for separate services, it also indicates that there was very little that was distinctly Chinese in either the physical appearance or business structure of settlements on the Palmer. A description of the south side of Byerstown, which was the Chinese sector, illustrates this point, the gambling houses being the exception:
The town consists of nine or ten Chinese stores built of bark, with the exception of one large galvanized iron one lately erected, and kept by
73. Elcoate to General Manager 20 September 1880, BR/QNB/032NBA.·
74. Advances were readily given to expanding businesses, for example a store-keeper or butcher going into gold buying. Elcoate to General Manager 20 September 1880, BR/QNB/032 NBA. After 1882, advances were more difficult to obtain, but this was also the case with Europeans. Over the period 1876-1884 the QNB had only one Chinese defaulter and an insolvent. Elcoate to General Manager 24 October 1881, 13 & 25 November 1882, BR/QNB/032 NBA. By 1883, a Chinese businessman was the bank's "only security". Alford to General Manager 3 June 1883, BR/QNB/032 NBA.
75. Minutes of 343rd meeting of the Directors of the Queensland National Bank 31 December 1878, A/QNB/301 pp.606-7 NBA.
76. General references to the type of Chinese businesses appear in the following sources: AB 1879 p.17; CC 8 July 1876; CB 21 July &27 October 1875, 17 June &8 July 1876; Q 6 March 1875, 21 December 1878
a strong, respectable firm, who evidently saw better days in their native land than the majority of their countrymen we daily see. There are two butcher's shops, one the property of Chinese...Then there are two Chinese hotels, but unless their inward appearance exceeds the outward, they are not worthy of comment. On the right hand side of the street there is one blacksmith's shop...[and] close to him Chinese gambling houses and a few more Celestial residences...77
Yet across the river on the north side, the Chinese had another eight stores, catering it seems solely for the European community. While there were Chinese carpenters, they obviously built in bark and iron and the style of building differed little from that of European tradesmen.78
Although large Chinese firms such as Wing On and Company employed teams to convey goods to the field, Chinese packers were also a significant economic force. They operated with very little capital, usually on an individual basis, and could carry average loads of 90 kilograms on bamboo carrying-poles at lower freight rates than horse or bullock teams.79 They were also highly reliable: they endured seasonal changes better than horse. and bullocks, eliminated the high cost of fodder during the dry season and were less affected by boggy conditions during the wet.80 Once having undercut the teamsters, they then began to buy them out. By the end of 1876 Chinese packers were the principal purchasers of horses;81 they established large camps, such as the one at the second crossing of the Palmer beyond Byerstown.82 However, some packers were hawking their wares without licences and Chinese
77. CH 17 June 1876.
78. It is known that at least three Chinese carpenters worked in the European sector of Byerstown in mid-1876. CH 17 June 1876.
79. This was the estimate of Chinese storekeepers. CH 13 September 1876; CC 17 November 1877.
80. AR 1877 p.l0; Q 11 September 1875, 1 July 1876.
81. Q 16 September 1876.
82. CC 28 July 1877.
storekeepers viewed their competition seriously, complaining of "the injury they [the storekeepers] sustain by their country men packing up goods to the various diggings and being able, having no licence to pay, to undersell the storekeeper."83 Despite complaints of this kind, hawking continued, as undercutting was of advantage to the consumer on a field with such a high cost of living.
Because of Chinese gardeners and butchers, the diet of the average Chinese miner was more balanced than that of most Europeans, at least during the first two years of the rush. The Chinese diet included small quantities of beef and pork, which kept butchers busy. One European described the situation at Byerstown:
The Chinese butchers have a fine slaughter yard, capable of holding eighty head of bullocks; also a large piggery. in which reside over sixty head of these useful animals, two or three of which are killed every Sunday morning and quickly disposed of at the block. porkey being Mr. Chinkey's principle hobby. 84
The meat was sometimes salted, cut into long strips and dried.85 Gardens flourished early in the history of the field, in isolated patches along the river banks, with a success that reflected the agricultural background of the immigrants. Again at Byerstown, there were, in addition to the butchers and piggery, "three fine gardens well attended to by the Chinese, and a constant supply of fresh vegetables of all kinds are always on hand, from the Irish spud to a Yankee water melon, and sold at a very reasonable price...".86 The Chinese also attempted to grow bananas, pineapples, sugar cane and corn, a crop for the dry season for both human consumption and fodder.87 Produce from the gardens was sold at market on Sundays.88
83. Hill to Under Sec Mines 4 September 1876, 76/70 MWO 13A/G1 QSA.
84. CB 17 June 1876.
85. Binnie, My Life, p.28.
86. CH 17 June 1876.
87. Q I, 17 January 1877, 9 October 1878; AR 1879 p.19.
88. Q 31 March 1877.
As the Palmer's population expanded, cultivation of crops along the river eventually brought agriculture into competition with mining. Gardens were disturbed and fresh vegetables became scarce and costly. In June 1876, McHenley described the decreasing use of fresh vegetables among Chinese at Revolver Point to which he attributed a rise in the prevalence of scurvy:
The people of China live principally on vegetable food. the insipid rice demanding savoury condiments. salted vegetables, eggs and fish, are in every day use, and on the diggings the condiments used were shark fins, caviar, skate, shrimps, beech-de-mer, eggs and vegetables, all salted in China and brought here for daily use. The vegetables grown in gardens, being scarce and dear, were not much used.89
The government had exacerbated this situation by an increased duty on rice, the Chinese staple food. As a result rice became scarce with merchants less willing to ship it to the field. The poorer diet in consequence weakened the constitution of many Chinese and there are references to swollen limbs and other signs of malnutrition, although only two Chinese deaths were linked directly to malnutrition during the decade.90
Sickness was rife among the Chinese, as was the case among Europeans. While Chinese doctors and herbalists practised on the field, caring for patients on a kinship or district group basis,91 there was little they could do to treat infectious diseases which exacted the heaviest toll. The Chinese believed that "vapours from damp ground" were responsible for illness.92 Fever, as it was
89. CH 21 June 1876.
90. The complications brought by discriminatory legislation will be discussed in more detail further on in the chapter. The symptoms of malnutrition were the swelling of the whole body, paralysis, and a quick death. Descriptions can be found in the following references: CC 15 September 1875; CH 15, 22 September 1875, 8 January 1876; Q 6 November 1875.
91. For example at Stony Creek in November 1875, two separate groups each had a doctor. Two doctors were Pan On Chong and Bo Wha Bong. QV&P 1878, 2. pp.283. 290. Other doctors in Cooktown treated only returned Chinese from the Palmer: Q 4 December 1875. Other references to medical care are in CH 21 July 1875, 8 July 1876.
92. Dundas-Crawford, Notes, p.23, FO 17/891 PRO.
generally known, was by far the main cause of death, claiming the lives of 62 Chinese in the decade 41 per cent of the total Chinese deaths -- most occurring in 1875 and 1876. Many of the fever victims had been in the colony only a few months, one having arrived in Cooktown two weeks previously; one had survived twelve years in the 93 colony only to die on the Palmer. 93 Fever came in epidemics, and it is probable that the graves at Revolver Point which caused Cheney to ponder Chinese dietary deficiency were actually the result of an identifiable fever outbreak in July-August 1875, which claimed seven lives. However, dysentery and other diseases of the digestive and urinary tracts, which were rampant among the European community in the first years of the rush, did not affect Chinese to the same degree. This was attributed to the sanitary habits of the Chinese, whose cleanliness was often noted. Of leprosy, a disease much feared by European propagandists, there was only one confirmed case on the Palmer.94
Nor were violent deaths among Chinese excessive. There were eleven fatal accidents, 95 including two mining accidents, both involving falls down shafts. Six died by suicide, five of these after 1879 when the field's returns had fallen far below even humble expectations. Two of the victims had been separated from their families for many years. Eight Chinese were murdered, three of them in 1877, and only one, Ah Que, was convicted of murder -- a double murder -- in 1881. 96
93. The following data regarding deaths has been extracted from the Palmer Death Register 1873-1883 unless otherwise stated. In most cases the duration of the Chinese immigrant in the colony was not indicated as known by the informant. Twenty fever cases for 1875-76 do have this information, and it is on this sample that this comment is based.
94. Ah Lum was the first and only case of leprosy confirmed on the Palmer 1873-83. He was a miner and died 12 October 1875. Sellheim to Attorney General 25 October 1875, and Sellheim to Col Sec 23 October 1875, 7512862 COL/A 214 QSA. Six cases, however, were reported in Cooktown during the same period. See 17/5080 COL/A 241 QSA; CH 17 October 1877; Q 6, 27 October 1877, 1 October 1880; 82/3631 COL/A 340 QSA.
95. This calculation includes deaths from drowning and snakebite. See Summary of Causes of Death at end of Chapter 6.
96. Cases of Ah Que 23 & 29 August 1877, CPS 13B/p5 QSA.
Hardened criminality did not characterize Chinese life on the field. Over two hundred Chinese faced police courts, but one in three was discharged. 97 While Sellheim suspected that there were professional criminals at work, he also admitted that he had no proof, for it was "next to impossible to detect crime amongst the Chinese."98 Inspector Thomas Clohesy, having inspected all camps at the peak of Chinese immigration, was less suspicious and reported that there was "no reason for alarm [as] they are well disposed if let alone".99
In the police courts, the majority of cases in which Chinese appeared involved assault of or petty theft from other Chinese. Although 52 convictions for assault resulted, the seriousness of the charges was diminished somewhat by the lenient sentences passed: ten were fined, another ten sentenced to fourteen days in the Maytown lockup, and one bound over to keep the peace. Most of the larceny charges -- 53 in all -- involved stealing food. Some of the cases seem trivial, yet in the years following the increased duty on rice in 1876, theft of a bag of rice was not regarded as such. Indeed, where the value of a bag of rice was between £1/5/6 and £2, the penalty was 6 months imprisonment in Rockhampton gaol. In comparison, the apparently more serious offence of stealing a revolver (valued at about £3) received a £5 fine. Even charges for tin stealing ranged from one to three months gaol.
Aside from assault and petty theft, most convictions recorded against Chinese were linked with gambling. Games of chance were an important social diversion for Chinese miners: probably their principal form of entertainment. Gambling houses were numerous in the major settlements on the Palmer: Fan Tan and Pak-a-pu were regularly attended, and for the lucky, Mai Pen Shei signs hung outside some stores
97. Statistics and references to Chinese crime in the following paragraphs are from CPS 13B/P4, CPS 13B/P5, &CPS 13A/P1 QSA. .
98. Sellheim to Col Sec 7 May 1877, 77/101 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
99. Clohesy to Comm Police 6 September 1377, 77/4398 COL/A 244 QSA.
to publicize the chance at lottery.100 While many Chinese were habitual gamblers, they were not rash, one observer noting that the individual "seldom mortgages his capital beyond his position to pay sixpence or a shilling" before retiring. 101 However innocent these social outings, they were still illegal in Queensland. But the law was not often invoked, for of the 45 convictions in the decade for gambling-related offences, the great majority arose from only two raids on gambling houses, one in Byerstown in 1876, the other at Maytown, over five years later. Most likely, the police were reluctant to carry out raids where they were outnumbered and where the Chinese could readily escape.
Minor breaches of the peace were also the subject of police action, their nature if anything underscoring the general orderliness of the Chinese population. Ten were charged with disorderly conduct (including a case of discharging fireworks), nine for indecent exposure (most while bathing in the river), and two were found guilty of abusive language. While two charges of sly grog selling were brought against Chinese, no equivalent restriction applied to the sale and use of opium, which was quite legal. The only two opium-related crimes reported by the courts involved the theft of opium, pipes and scrapers from other Chinese. However, very little is known about the use of opium on the field, except that it was easily procurable from dealers or Chinese hoteliers and that the more successful businessmen may have grown wealthy from this source.102 Hodgkinson observed that the average Chinese was "not an habitual smoker", the drug, he considered, holding "the same moral relation with the alien as that of spirits does with the European."103 Nonetheless, the opium smoker's outlay was between 6d to 3/-per day, which probably was a drain on the
100. CB 18 .June 1876.
101. PC 24 March 1883.
102. One of the most successful storekeepers was also an opium dealer, with opium being Elcoate to General Manager 28 August 1880, BR/QNB/032 NBA. Quong Nam Chong who kept in a bank safe. 21 November 1881,
103. AR 1881 p.12.
pocket of the out-of-luck miner.104 Of other social activities among the Chinese, very little is known. A few drank alcohol, some at European hotels.105 Some participated in the annual St. Patrick's day106 sports; but all celebrated the Chinese New Year.
The Chinese brought their religious beliefs with them, erecting a temple in the vicinity of Palmerville by August 1874.107 Other temples were constructed as new areas were opened up to Chinese,108 watched over by keepers.109 Again little is known of the forms, fittings or rituals conducted in these buildings; presumably joss sticks and paper were burned in urns surrounding Chinese religious idols, but only the ornate gong of the last surviving "joss" at Maytown exists today. 110 The Chinese New Year was regularly observed with much feasting, entertainment and music, over two days, for which there was a complete cessation of mining by the Chinese.111 The New Year celebrations of 11-12 February 1880 tempted at least one European miner to appeal to the warden that the Chinese claims were abandoned; the case was thrown out of court.112
104. AR 1881 p.12.
105. The records of the police courts reveal that a minority of Chinese drank alcohol, some to excess. Drunkeness led to one charge of drunk and disorderly conduct (Ah Yum), and assault of a police officer by Ah Yah. Tommy Ah Bin was charged with drunkeness. See cases of Ah Yah 30 October 1876, CPS 13B/p3 and Tommy Ah Bin 7 February 1881, and Ah Yum 22 September 1881, CPS 13B/P5 QSA. A reference-was also made to the drinking of individual Chinese in the case of Berry v Stein 30 March 1883, CPS 13B/P5 QSA. Johnny Ah Sing had visited a European hotel at the time of his assault by a European drunk on 29 December 1874, CPS 13B/p3 QSA.
106. PC 24 March 1883. There was a special Chinese event.
107. Q 3 October 1874.
108. Q 21 December 1878.
109. A "joss" was still operating in Palmerville as late as 1879, with Ah Sing as keeper. Low Leong v Ah Sing 10 April 18.79, CPS 13B/P4 QSJ
110. Located at the James Cook Historical Museum.
111. Celebrations included a fireworks display. Biddie, My Life, pp.3637;
W.O. Hodgkinson to Under Sec Mines 2 March 1882, MWO 13B/G2 QSA.
112. Christian Pedersen v Ah Chong and Ah Sam 16 February 1880, MWO 13B/G2 QSA.
Traditional obligations required the Chinese to return home after a period of mining, with the result that few married or entered into other long-term commitments. For Chinese who died on the Palmer, burial overseas seems to have been frowned on as it denied the fulfilment of ancestor worship. Even so, at least 148 Chinese are known to have been buried on the Palmer, although a few were exhumed at a later date. At Maytown, the burial ground was separate from the European cemetery, the only indication of its location now being a blue diorite slab, about 36 centimetres high, firmly set in the ground. Bone markers, carved with Chinese characters, used to stand on the grave sites, but all have been removed in recent years.113 Whether a funeral association existed on the Palmer is not known.114 It seems the majority of burials were carried out with little ceremony by the individuals such as a brother, nephew, cousin, neighbour or friend,115 or groups of Chinese, or by Europeans assisted by Chinese.116 One Revolver Point storekeeper acted as informant or undertaker on several occasions for deaths in his area. However, while there were these obvious manifestations of kinship allegiance in some burial, Sellheim, Hill and Coward constantly complained of the reluctance of Chinese to bury Chinese dead.117 There were possibly as many as
113. The Cairns Historical Society has in its collection a photograph of one of these markers in situ. The photograph has been reproduced on an accompanying page. See also S.E. Stephens, Maytown Cemetery, Historical Society Cairns North Queensland Bulletin 142 (June 1971), p.
114. Dundas-Crawford claimed that a Fokting-tong or Funeral Association existed in Cooktown in 1877. While the Association was expected to assist in defraying funeral expenses, its effectiveness, according to Dundas-Crawford, had diminished, thereby creating more reliance on European institutions. Dundas-Crawford, Notes, pp.10-U, 29, F017/891.
115. The Palmer District Death Register 1873-83 has been used as the source for information regarding burials. The following footnotes are intended as additional comment on information extracted from the register.
116. However, it must be added that such statement of specific relationship are rare. Over the decade, two deaths were reported by a "cousin", one by a "nephew" and three by a ''brother''. At least five of the informants described their relationship to the deceased as "friend". In other cases, in which an entry for an informant is given, the name and occupation of the informant is usually given.
117. Sellheim to Col Sec 23 October 1875, 75/2862 COL/A 214 &Hill to Col Sec 29 April 1876. 76/1172 COL/A 221 QSA; Coward to Min Mines 18 February 1876, QV&P 1878, 2, p.286.
thirty-eight Chinese buried by individual Europeans, the gold field administration or police: some of these were under the care of a European doctor at the Maytown hospital at the time of death. Burial, it seems, was a kinship responsibility, and St. George, in early 1875, noted that those left unburied were apparently without kin.118 On another occasion, when a Chinese doctor was questioned by police after refusing to become involved in one such burial, he explained
that the dead man was not one of his countrymen.119 To McHenley, the Anglo-Chinese linguist, it was the inadequacy of the European system that was at fault as he argued that the Chinese believed that when a man died in the house of a stranger, then the proprietor of that house was responsible for recompensing the family. 120 Those Chinese who died on the Palmer left only the most meagre information about themselves in European records: the columns regarding their family in the death register are generally entered as unknowns, and very few cases of exhumation were recorded before 1883.121
The Chinese population was almost exclusively male with an average age in the early thirties.122 The emigration of women was rare, although two women did come to the field to join their husbands late in the decade. One, the wife of James Ah Fun, a prominent Maytown storekeeper, was married in Canton but bore their first child on the field in 1881.123 The first Chinese marriage on the field did not
118. St George to Col Sec 20 March 1876. 75/2953 COL/A 214 QSA.
119. Constable Alexander McLennan. QV&P1878. 2. p.284.
120. CC15 September 1875. See similar explanation in CH24 June 1876.
121. Ah Mee. (Hodgkinson to Under Col Sec 18 September 1882. 82/5251 COL/A 347 QSA); Ah Chi. (Hodgkinson to Under Col Sec 11 September 1882. 82/5101 COL/A 346 QSA); Ah Quock buried July 1815. exhumed September 1883 (A.C. Baldane to Under Col Sec 20 September 1883. 83/5092 COL/A 310 QSA). Note: a search for further application for exhumation through Colonial secretary’s file beyond 1883 has not been attempted for this thesis.
122. The figure is based on information in the Death Register regarding the 148 Chinese who died on the Palmer.
123. Application for certificate of naturalization 23 November 1882. 82/6242 COL/A 350 QSA. Ah Fun had been to Peak Downs and the Etheridge prior to coming to the Palmer during the initial rush.
take place until August 1884, between Hung Fann and the wealthy merchant Gee Kee, who had been in the colony fifteen years. The wedding was something of an occasion, the guest list including the members of the gold field administration; the Queenslander reported that the bride was presented with a half a sovereign from every member of the Chinese community.124 Both Ah Fun and Gee Kee were naturalized soon after their marriages.125 Even less is known of relationships between Chinese men and European women. Two women, named Sarah Ah Bow and Sarah Ah Chin, lived in Maytown in 1876, and one Margaret Riley was called in as a witness for Chinese at Byerstown.126 The de facto relationship of Ah Bin, storekeeper at Revolver Point, and Kate Knowles, was considered stable, with three children born by 1877, one on the Palmer.127 The attitude of the European community to these women can only be guessed, although two acted as midwives to women whose husbands were prominent in the European community.128
While the Palmer Gold Field was not marked by outbreaks of physical violence between Chinese and Europeans, there nonetheless was uneasiness between the two populations. Evidence in the records of the police courts reveals a sporadic campaign of economic harassment against individual Chinese entrepreneurs, of both an irrational and rational kind. And while several Chinese used the police courts to gain redress for the misconduct of other Chinese, it is clear that they were reluctant to do so when Europeans were involved.
124. Wedding ceremony described in Q23 August 1884.
125. Return of Aliens Naturalized During the Last Five Years (August 1880-August 1885, QV&P, 2, p.231; Gee Kee's certificate of naturalization SCT/CF 34 QSA. During the same period, 14 Chinese were naturalized in Cooktown.
126. Sarah Ah Chin and Sarah Ah Bow gave evidence against Sail Qui and Ah On 12 July 1876, CPS 13B/P3 QSA; Ah Kee was discharged of a charge of larceny with the evidence of Margaret Riley 6 June 1818, CPS 13A/Pl QSA.
127. Information about the Ah Bin family gathered from the case of Ah Bin v A. Dimes 7 October 1875, CPS 13B/P2 QSA.
128. Father's occupation contained in information concerning births from Palmer Birth Register 1874-1883.
In exceptional instances they did so with the support of a European or an influential Chinese businessman or interpreter such as Harry Hee or Sam Hand.129 Evident in those Chinese complaints brought to court is the open provocation of the Europeans involved; the penalties against them were minimal, all involving fines in default of short gaol terms. Some cases were notable.130 In December, 1874, Johnny Ah Sing had been invited by John McLennan, a European publican to have a drink but in an ensuing fracas was knocked down several times by Frederick Brady, a habitual drunkard under prohibition. A European witness, Lewis Moniz, accused McLennan of encouraging the incident, saying: "you ought to be ashamed of yourself allowing your man to knock the Chinaman down in such a way." Brady was fined £5 in default 3 months gaol; McLennan £20 for supplying spirits to a known drunkard. In the cases of Christopher Palmerston and Thomas Sutton, in September 1876, blatant harassment of Ah Yuck and Ah Toy was carried out with undisguised intent. Palmerston, the only butcher operating on the Right Hand Branch at that time, obviously wished to maintain a monopoly over the trade. When Ah Yuck attempted to set up in competition, Palmerston and Sutton maliciously fired the grass in the vicinity of the Chinese butcher's yards, driving off the cattle. Palmerston and Sutton then assaulted Ah Yuck and his assistant Ah Toy. While Palmerston and Sutton were found guilty they received fines of only £5 and £3 each.
Harassment sometimes took on more mischievous forms, with destruction of property still the motive. There was the case of William Wallace, who in August 1874 deliberately let loose his eight draught
129. Both Hee and Hand were fluent and influential witnesses in Maytown court cases. In one, Hee appeared for a European defendant against a Chinese plaintiff. Ah Sue v. A. Moniz 23 April 1878. CPS 13B/P4 QSA.
130. Information contained in the following two paragraphs regarding Chinese charges against Europeans has been derived from CPS 13B/P3-5. CPS 13A/Pl QSA.
horses in Pan Shing's gardens at Palmerville. In September 1877, fire was set to fodder being carried by Ah Sing. Although the defendant in this latter case was discharged, the evidence suggests that the fire had been deliberately lit, but the identity of the European could not be proven. While similar cases illustrate victimisation of individual Chinese, its full extent remains unknown, as only twenty-three charges were laid during the decade, eight of which were dismissed. Clearly the difficulty of arranging mixed juries militated against the impartiality of the courts, with the penalties for Europeans generally less than for Chinese found guilty of a similar offence. The most outrageous case was that of Rogers, who killed a Chinese miner at Stewart's Camp in mid-1878. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, even though the evidence was quite damning. Howard St George was later to remark that the acquittal was "in the face of what to all unprejudiced persons appeared the clearest evidence" adding that Rogers was "conspicuous even amongst this community for his unreasoning animosity against the Chinese.” 131
Only rarely did animosity find expression in violence, but it was to become a powerful political force. In Cooktown, a small but vocal band of entrepreneurs campaigned for the rights of European diggers and small businessmen. Within their ranks were very few miners, although one member, James Mulligan, proved a valuable asset to the group, for not only did he retain considerable influence within the European mining community, but he had close contact with Gresley Lukin of the Queenslander. This anti-Chinese group was initially concerned with the influx of overseas Chinese, the first meeting being held in March 1875. While its main objective was to urge the government to take steps to avert inevitable conflict between Europeans and Chinese miners, it also informed the government that a committee had been formed to coordinate concerted action on the part of the miners.132 A second meeting held on 8 April was more specific in its resolutions, demanding that the government restrict Chinese from new gold fields for
131. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 2 December 1878, 78/211 MWO13B/G1QSA.
132. Q 3 April 1875.
at least three years.133 Attempts to channel anti-Chinese feeling on the Palmer into violent action met with little success: the committee itself preferred the vitriol of the pen to agitation on the field, sparking not a riot but a lively, sectarian debate on the merits and demerits of Chinese immigration. The anti-Chinese debate was based prima facie on the familiar stereotypes of the Victorian gold fields. It was claimed that Chinese miners did not prospect, but merely took advantage of the absence of European miners from their diggings, and that by their impermanency and stolid self-sufficiency they impeded European industry and investment in reefing. Worst of all, the Chinese were vilified as morally debased and carriers of disease, with a propensity for violent crime.134
However there were other businessmen who welcomed a stable laissez faire relationship with the Chinese, dreaming of Cooktown as an entrepot for Chinese and Indian trade, with its agricultural hinterland tilled by cheap Asian labour. Drawing their members from the Chamber of Commerce, the group's most outspoken and influential voice was the editor of the Cooktown Herald, W.B.L. Bailey135 who claimed that his newspaper was "an advocate for Chinese labor directed into a proper channel."135 They recognized the value of a voluntary Chinese labour force, a view diametrically opposed to that of the anti-Chinese faction, as demonstrated by an editorial of the Herald of 1 December 1875:
The Chinese who visit us are not a pauper race, they pay their way fairly, are hardworking·, frugal, and industrious; they work for less wages than a European, and are less liable to epidemical diseases that are so prevalent among the Europeans of the North.
133. CH 10 April 1875; Q 1 May 1875.
134. These sentiments were expressed at the anti-Chinese meetings. See footnotes 132 & 133. See also Phoenix to editor, CH 21 April 1875; Nemo to editor, CC 27 September 1876; Southern Cross to Editor, CH 23 August 1876.
135. Other prominent Chinese supporters were F.J.W. Beardmore, W.J. Hartley, J.C. Baird, J. Walsh and E. Henriques.
136. CH 13 October 1877.
It was further stated that the Palmer could only be developed by Chinese, as "white men cannot make it pay.”137 Predictably such criticism of the European miner was resented by the anti-Chinese group. The debate was fundamentally economic; the undercurrents of racism were strong. The pro-Chinese group defended the charges that the Chinese were undesirable immigrants, but did not oppose measures to restrict them from new gold fields. Yet when other measures aimed at the Chinese threatened commercial interests by causing poverty among Chinese consumers, they were swiftly denounced.
The anti-Chinese agitation placed the government of Arthur Macalister in a quandary. Not only had the former Palmer ministry entered into negotiations to employ Chinese coolies on sugar plantations, 138 but the Governor, William Cairns, was totally opposed to any form of discriminatory legislation.139 Also, there existed international treaties between Great Britain and China which, in fact, discouraged any attempt to prohibit Chinese immigration. Macalister was forced to admit the delicacy of the matter, and concluded that there "was nothing to prohibit Chinamen from landing here in large numbers, provided they paid their passage-money and did not violate the sanitary regulations of the various ports."140 This admission foreshadowed the indirect tactics adopted to restrict Chinese immigration. In April 1875, Doctor Conradi, the health officer at Cooktown, received "special instructions" to strictly enforce the health
137. Contributor to editor, CB 3 April 1875.
138. See J. Rose (ed). Cambridge History of the British Empire Vol 7, part 1: Australia (Cambridge 1933) p.322. The Palmer ministry included such men as Joshua Bell. W.B. Walsh. J.M. Thompson and Thomas Hurray Prior.
139. Cairns had been appointed lieut-governor in Malacca. St. Kitts in 1868, Honduras in 1870. and Trinidad in 1874 before coming to Queensland. While at St. Kitts he was appointed to a board of inquiry to look into the condition of Indians and Chinese in British Guiana. ADB 3, pp.33Q-1; He was of the opinion that the proposal of the Queensland government to implement any form of discriminatory legislation as "shortsighted and unfair" and "a sop" to the northern electorates ''where Chinese competition is of course distasteful." Confidential Report on Parliamentary Proceedings 12 August 1876. Queensland 112407 CO 234/36 PRO.
140. Macalister to deputation led by J.R. Dickson. undated press clipping, enclosed Dickson to Macalister 6 April 1875. 75/1024 COL/A 208 QSA.
regulations on board steamers with Chinese passengers.141 The specific nature of these instructions was not spelt out, although members of the Legislative Assembly were asked to ''make public that all steamers carrying Chinese to Cooktown will be liable to be detained there until the Health Officer satisfies himself that they are fit subjects to be landed."142 Conradi apparently failed to appreciate the broad hint to use his office to obstruct Chinese entry for political purposes. Interpreting the special instructions as a slight on his professional capacities, he indignantly replied that all ships from overseas were "subjected to the closest examination" as a matter of course.143 Conradi later resigned his post but not before the defeat of the Macalister government at the polls in May 1876. 144 In the new government, led by George Thorn, William Murphy was sworn in as member for the new electorate of Cook.145
Under the guise of revenue raising, the Thorn administration moved quickly to amend existing legislation, placing further penalties on Chinese. First, duty on rice was increased from £2 to £7/6/8 per ton under the Customs Duties Act of 1870. Ignoring criticism that the action was a ''miserable contradiction" of the avowedly free-trade principles of the government,146 Treasurer James Dickson, nevertheless, justified the measure on the grounds that rice was "chiefly consumed by those colored races, whose arrival in the colony we have to deplore".147
141. Ibid. Authorities at Hong Kong and Singapore were also informed. See 75/1445 COL/A 209 QSA, and QV&P 1875, p.95.
142. Macalister, in reply to .McIlwraith 2 June 1875, QV&P, p.95. The query by McIlwraith seems to suggest that the move was not generally known. Yet Macalister had informed a Cooktown delegation led by Mulligan, of this action, before 17 April. See CH 17 April 1875.
143. S. Conradi to H.H.Massie 12 April 1875, 75/3403 COL/A 216 QSA.
144. QPD, XX, introduction. For papers relating to the resignation of Conradi see 76/2164 COL/A 225 QSA.
145. QPD, XX, introduction.
146. J.P. Bell to Legislative Assembly, QPD XX (15 August 1876), p.485.
147. QPD, XX (26 July 1876), p.362.
The government also sought an amendment to the Gold Fields Act of 1874, proposing to raise miners' rights for "aliens" (African and Asiatic) to £3, six times the amount paid by European miners. Alien business men would also be affected under this amendment, with business licences rising from £4 to £10. In parliament, the more blatant aspects of the Gold Fields Act amendment bill provoked strident debate, especially clause 3 which provided that any Chinese (or any other Asian or African for that matter) was automatically an alien unless sufficient proof of naturalization was immediately forthcoming.148 Both bills prompted hostile reactions from vocal sections of the Chinese community on the Palmer and in Cooktown, where a large public meeting was held on 1 August to protest against the Queensland government's proposal "to enact measures opposed to the tradition and the policy of the English law." A petition was subsequently forwarded to the Legislative Assembly, arriving in Brisbane before the third reading of both bills.149
The Chinese opposed the bills on commercial, political, and humanitarian grounds, placing the whole issue of discriminatory legislation against Chinese within the wider perspective of British law and foreign policy, the increased duty on rice, described as an "oppressive and unjust measure of taxation" came in for bitter criticism on the grounds that local Chinese had already made significant contributions to government revenue by way of import duties on other commodities but still had no political rights within the colony. The government was accused not only of wantonly breaching British treaties with China but also of acting with inequity by attempting "to starve out the Chinese", knowing that a tax on a basic item such as rice would "fall heavily on the poorer class of Chinese." Furthermore, the Chinese warned, with respect to the proposal to raise miners' rights that if imposed it would "effectively extinguish the
148. Preamble to Gold Fields Act Amendment Bill, of 1876 as passed by the two houses of Parliament 20 September 1876. See photocopy at end of chapter.
149. The whole text of the petition was printed in the Cooktown Herald 2 August 1876, and has been reproduced in full at the end of this chapter.
mining industry" on the Palmer and reduce Cooktown to its "original insignificance". Claiming that at least one-half of the gold won by Chinese miners went back into equipment, food and taxes, they openly condemned the "idle and ignorant" European miners who "failed to make the gold fields of this district payable after trial": an assertion naturally unpalatable to Europeans. However, the content of the petition was not universally critical, as the Chinese put forward more equitable alternatives to raise revenue from those who could pay:
That if the Government of the colony determine to impose more taxation of the Chinese, your petitioners would prefer a poll-tax to be levied on immigrant Chinese, which would not be open to the objection of its being an insidious measure, or a tax upon the export of gold, which would fall upon those able to pay, and be a more just and statemanlike measure than one which has been deliberately calculated to starve out the Chinese already in this colony.
As the original petition was in Chinese, it was accompanied by a translation certified by a Cooktown solicitor. The translation was read to the Legislative Assembly by William Murphy, on 15 August 1876.150 However, the Speaker objected to it, deeming it "irregular" and "disrespectful": it was irregular because Murphy had himself not provided a certificate endorsing the accuracy of the translation, but had simply placed his signature above the list of Chinese names, and was disrespectful because it alleged that the Queensland government proposed "to legislate against the spirit and letter of solemn treaties, in order to oppress and starve the already oppressed Chinese in the sparsely populated wilderness of Queensland."151 That the Chinese were oppressed was rejected out of hand, and to accuse the government of proposing legislation to oppress them in the future was declared equally nonsensical. In the ensuing debate it was also bought to
150. The petition was translated by Mr. Foon Sing, with the legal advice of Mr. Reilly, a Cooktown solicitor. CH 2 August 1876; the petition was acknowledged as read and received on 15 August, QV&P 1876, I, p.113.
151. QPD, XX (16 August 1876), p.515.
Murphy's attention that he was ineligible to certify the petition because he could not read Chinese; even the different lengths of the two documents were questioned. The exasperated Murphy could only reply: "no member of the House could certify it.”152 Despite the objections of Murphy and W.H. Walsh, who maintained that petitions were "necessarily objections to Governments",153 the Colonial Secretary ordered that the Chinese petition not be printed on the grounds of its "untrue or incorrect" content and the matter was peremptorily dropped.154
The petitioners were understandably indignant and were reported as being determined to seek the appointment of a Chinese consul to represent their interests.155 Further. it was alleged that a petition had also been sent to the Chinese Emperor drawing his attention to the breach of treaties with Great Britain.156 Complaints also came from some Europeans objecting to the proposals as "class" legislation ruinous to the future prosperity of Cooktown: they claimed it would increase the cost of services, such as the Royal Mail which operated comparatively cheaply because of the conveyance of Chinese passengers. In desperation, several Chinese appealed to the Governor. William Cairns, urging him to withhold assent to both bills. As it eventuated, Cairns gave assent to the Customs Duties Act of1876, imposing a duty of one penny on each pound of imported rice159 but deliberated over the amendment to the Gold
152. QPD.XX (15 August 1876). p.477.
153. Ibid.
154. QPD.XX(16 August 1876). p.517.
155. Q19August 1876.
156. CH23September 1876; Q30September 1876.
157. Give Every Man His Due to editor. CH 25 scriber to editor. CC 6 September 1876.October 1876; Sub158.CH 23 September 1876; Q 30 September. 1876.
159. 40 Victoriae 5. An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain Increased Duties of Customs. QGG. XIX. 32 (30 October 1876). supplement. pp.623-4. This legislation was retrospective to 27 July.
Fields Act. The Attorney General, Samuel Griffith, had tried to reassure the governor that it was not inconsistent with the Treaty of Tien Tsin, and that precedents existed in legislation passed by both the Victorian and New South Wales governments.160 However, Cairns informed the Earl of Carnarvon on 11 October that he had decided to reserve the bill on the grounds of its "extraordinary nature."161 Within a month he received notice of his commission to South Australia; 162 his replacement was Arthur Kennedy, Governor of Hong Kong.
Cairns' decision to reserve assent to the Gold Fields Act amendment pleased most Chinese, but the prospects for alluvial miners on the Palmer were fast diminishing. 7,708 Chinese arrived on the field within the first five months of 1877, bringing the total population to around 18,000, a number, in Sellheim's opinion, "considerably in excess of the capabilities of the field in the dry season." By the close of May, the average earnings of Chinese miners were estimated at a mere 3 dwts.163 The increased rice tax was having its effect on the diet and health of the miners. Taam Sze Pui who arrived during this time was greatly disturbed by the distress of earlier arrivals:
Oh, what a disappointment when we learnt that the rumour was unfounded and we were mislead! Not only was gold difficult to find the climate was not suitable and was the cause of frequent attacks of illness. As we went about, there met our gaze the impoverished condition and the starved looks of our fellow. countrymen who were either penniless or ill, and there reached our ears endless sighs of sorrow. Those who arriving first expressed no regret for being late, on the contrary, they were thinking of
160.Griffith to Acting Private Secretary A.V. Drury 5 October 1876, QV&P 1877, 3, pp.229-30.
161.Cairns to Vice President of the Executive Council, 9 October 1876 & Cairns to Earl of Carnarvon 11 October 1876, QV&P 1877, 3, pp.23o-1.
162. News of Cairns' new appointment first appeared in the local press in November 1876. CH 29 November 1876.
163. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 1 June 1877, 77/122 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
departing. Could we, who had just arrived, remain untouched at these sad tales?162
There was growing apprehension among gold field administration staff over their ability to cope with a steadily increasing population. W.R.O. Hill expressed his fears in May 1877: “I trust the Govt. Are taking into consideration the desirability of checking the immigration of Chinese in such numbers for even now things are beginning to look serious and I dread what it is likely to be in a few months hence.” 165 Disputes over claims, rare in the past, became more common, some leading to fighting. When the first of these occurred, Sellheim described it as "peculiar", caused by the intrusion of "a mob of new chum Chinamen.”166 Other disputes occurring throughout 1877 were similarly triggered by the new arrivals.167
As the Chinese population steadily increased public meetings were called again in Cooktown and at Thornborough on the Hodgkinson to demand some form of government control over immigration. The Cook District Progress Association rather oddly reiterated the demands of 1875 to prohibit Chinese from mining "any new field for three years afterˇ its opening and proclamation"168 Indeed, by mid 1877, this
164. Tam Size Piu, My Life, pp.10-11.
165. Hill to Under Sec Mines 1 June 1877, 77/85 MWO 13A/G1 QSA.
166. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 April 1877, 77/79 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
167. In March 1877, about one hundred long term Chinese miners tried to reclaim an area recently proven rich by "new chum" Chinese (Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 April 1877, 77/79 MWO 13B/G1 QSA). Another incident occurred at the end of June, when "a mob of new chum Chinamen" jumped the claims in the possession of other Chinese at the Right Band Branch (Sellheim to Mines Office 25 June 1877, reprinted in Q 30 June 1877). During the first half of August, an affray between Chinese over a claim at Jessop's Gully was reported, with wounds inflicted (CH 15 August 1877). Sellheim vaguely mentioned "one or two serious fights" during July (Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 4 August 1877, 77/177 MWO 13B/G1 QSA), while Hill received information of a case of claim jumping by an armed group at Byerstown early September (Hill to Under Sec for Mines 1 October 1877, 77/1647 MWO 13A1G1 QSA.)
168. CC 15 August 1877. See also Q 25 August 1877, CH 18 August 1877.
demand was no longer relevant to the Palmer, now in its fourth mining year. The only plausible explanation is that this was a veiled attempt by the Progress Association, which had close links with the pro-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, to defuse local attempts to disrupt commercial relations with Chinese ports. If so, they were not entirely successful; aware that a three year embargo on Chinese no longer affected the Palmer, anti-Chinese groups agitated to restrict Chinese from mining for a longer period. A public meeting was held in Cooktown at the end of June, and a petition was drawn up requesting W.E. Murphy to promote a measure excluding Chinese miners from new gold fields for five years. But it was the Hodgkinson miners who were most vociferous, alarmed now that the large Chinese population might spill southwards. "It's high time our defences were looked after," reported the Hodgkinson Mining News, "as I have heard that the videttes of an invading army of 'Chinks' are already down the river -- rumour says from 100 to 300.”170
Meanwhile the government had embarked upon yet another programme to halt further immigration through quarantine regulations, which by its poor timing almost cost them the support of the new governor, Arthur Kennedy. From January 1877, with the discovery of a case of smallpox, all vessels from Chinese ports had to obtain admission to pratique at the first port of call south of Somerset.171 Kennedy, en route to Moreton Bay from Hong Kong, had intended disembarking at Cooktown but was prevented by the new regulation. Waiting dignitaries were obliged to row out to the governor-designate's quarantined steamer to present their petitions including a magnificently hand-painted scroll from a Chinese deputation. 172 While Kennedy was not amused by the "unnecessary strictness" of the quarantine regulations, his opinion did not prevent the government issuing a further order,
169. CC 27 June 1877.
170. HMN'11 August 1877.
171. QGG, XX, 2 (6 January 1877), pp.9-10.
172. CC 21, 24 March 1877. The Chinese greeting was apparently very elaborate, designed by Ty Tong Yik, an artist, and translated by Samuel Ashew.
Effective from 30 March, requiring all ships for Chinese ports, with or without clean bills of health, to be placed in quarantine. 173 Ten days later Kennedy was cleared from quarantine and invested as the Governor of Queensland. 174
With valuable émigrés remaining at sea for the quarantine period and shipping timetables disrupted, both European and Chinese commerce was severely affected. Little or no preparation was made to accommodate or feed the passengers of quarantined ships, and shipowners found themselves paying the costs. With inadequate sanitary conditions at Quarantine stations, such as Fitzroy Island, it was feared that disease would spread rather than being contained.175 Moreover, Kennedy was alarmed at the treatment meted out to “the more thrifty sober and industrious Chinese immigrants.” A confidential despatch to the Earl of Carnarvon reveals that “he did not share in the apprehensions” of his ministers, for he regarded the Chinese as “useful” colonists. He
173-175 foot notes see original thesis
described the inadequate quarantine facilities as "calculated to produce greater evils than it was proposed to avert", as well as claiming that smallpox was more prevalent among European immigrants than Chinese. Kennedy concluded that valuable trade would be lost.176 It seemed that Cairns and Kennedy were of similar ilk, but this was not so.
The clumsy and unpopular quarantine measures were only a stopgap. What the government had in mind was a two-fold attack; involving not only an amendment to the Gold Fields Act to restrict Chinese mining but also a measure to regulate immigration. The Chinese Immigrants Regulation Bill and the amendment to the Gold Fields Act progressed simultaneously through parliament, and it is clear that most parliamentarians did not distinguish between them in debate. The Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act, which became law on 20 August 1877 placed a £10 poll tax on Chinese entering the colony.177 The Gold Fields Act Amendment Act of 1877, passed 1 October, was essentially the same as its predecessor which had been reserved by Cairns; it imposed a £3 fee for miners' rights and £10 for business licences. It differed in the substitution of the word "person" for any "Asiatic or African alien" in Clause 2 with regard to penalties for illegal mining and the omission of the offending section of Clause 3 which in the former amendment had made the assumption that any Asian or African was an alien unless immediate proof was produced. 178 The governor had no grounds to refuse assent. Predictably, pro-Chinese elements in Cooktown were critical of the imposition of a poll tax; Bailey of the Cooktown Herald denounced the Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act as "iniquitous, tyrannical and un-
176. Kennedy to Earl of Carnarvon 16 May 1877, Queensland/9062 CO 234/3 PRO
177. 41 Victoriae 12. An Act to regulate the Immigration of Chinese and to make provision against their becoming a charge upon the Colony.
178. 41 Victoriae 12. An Act to Amend "The Gold Fields Act 1874" so far as it relates to Asiatic and African Aliens and in other respects.
just.” 179 From the Governor came a pessimistic forecast for Cooktown’s future: ‘No more illegible of illegible,000 a month”.180 Its impact was immediate, as there were no new Chinese immigrants to Cooktown for over a month after the enactment of the Regulation Act. The first illegible to arrive early in October were businessmen: they regarded the 10 entry fee as an acceptable business risk.181 However, in the subsequent three years, only three hundred Chinese paid the capitation fee for entry to Queensland.182 Some were returning entrepreneurs as Sellheim received many enquiries from Chinese store-keepers wanting to make short term visits to their ancestral villages as to whether the Act applied to them. It was rumoured that a few did not return without paying the entry fee, by travelling through Port Darwin and other colonies.183 However, while the Regulation Act was discriminatory, it did not cause distress to Chinese already in the colony. In this regard it differed from its companion legislation, the Gold Fields Act Amendment Act of 1877, which had far greater effect on the Palmer itself.
179. CH 19 September 1877
180. Q 6 October. 1877
181. CC 6 October 1877. See also CH 10 October 1877.
182. Return Showing the number of Chinese who paid the Capitulation Fee, from August 1877 to September 1880.
183. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 30 June 1879, 79//64 MWO 13B/G2 QSA,
Chinese miners were understandably angered at having to pay £3 for a miner's right and it was rumoured that the Chinese would physically resist any attempt by the gold field administration to
extract payment. Sellheim reported this undercurrent of discontent to the Under Secretary for Mines in 1877:
I am informed by leading Chinamen that the passing of this Act is the cause of great discontent amongst their countrymen, and it is rumoured that at the expiration of many of the current licences, a rollup may be looked forward to, if the £3 licences should be strictly enforced. I trust such an event will not take place, as I fail to see how much bloodshed could be prevented in such a case. 184
No violence eventuated, however, as it became clear to gold field staff that collection of revenue was now near to impossible. Indeed Sellheim asserted that "the issue of Miners Rights is a perfect d letter,"185 for while he had accused leading Chinese storekeepers discouraging payment of the increased fee initially,186 it was evident to him that most of the Chinese miners were simply too impoverished to pay. Fines served no purpose, and if imprisonment ordered, all "the gaols in the colony would be filled in a fortnight”. Assistant Warden Farrelly, during his December patrol, let about hundred Chinese miners go without payment because, in his opinion, they were "actually starving and suffering from fever and sickness
... the majority of the Chinese whose Miners Rights have now expired are unable to pay for new ones whilst others are trying to evade the payment under the Amended Gold Fields Act. The Chinese Miners on this field are rendered penniless through their inability to wash the alluvial they have been raising from the Creeks and Gullies for months past but I have reasons to believe that as soon as the rainy season is over and they are able to commence washing I will have no difficulty in collecting the revenue
184. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 2 November 1877, 77/252 MWO 13B/ QSA.
185. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 5 February 1878, 78/29 MWO 13B/G QSA.
186. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 2 November 1877, 77/252 MWO 13BI QSA.
187. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 5 February 1878, 78/29 MWO 13B/G1 QSA
from them. However there are many that will be unable to pay and who appears to be subsisting on the charity of their countryman will have to be summarily dealt with. 188
Hill was equally unsuccessful in extracting payment from Chinese miners. His long-held attitude to Chinese was obviously mellowed their plight, for he pessimistically predicted "the beginning of the end [of the Palmer] if the present oppressive Chinese legislation enforced." 189
Contrary to the objective of the Act, Sellheim found that had collected less rather than more revenue in the first month of implementation, and notified the Under Secretary for Mines accordingly:
The issue of Miners Rights has been smaller than during any previous month that I have been in charge of these goldfields. The collections of the ten shilling fee was beset with many difficulties but the collection of the three pound licence is a matter of impossibility, at any rate for the present ...Regarding Miners Rights, from my experience of the present condition of the Chinamen on this Goldfield, I fear that the Revenue will lose about £5000 per annum by the passing of the Act. 190
From October 1877 to July 1878 only 217 miners' rights were collected by Sellheim, in some months none at all.191 The total number issued for the whole field during that period would not have amounted to more than 495.192 Even with the coming of the wet season, the lot of
188. Farrelly to Under Sec Mines 14 January 1878, MWO l3A/G1 QSA
189. Hill to Under Sec Mines, November report, in CH 25 December
190. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 2 November 1877 77/252 MWO 13B/ QSA; also CC 17 November 1877.
191. Number of Miners' Rights issued to Chinese in the Maytown district
October 1817- July 1878.
October 1877 39 March 1878 25
November 1 April 0
December 0 May 2
January 1878 1 June 52
February 54 July 43
Extracted from the Register of Miners' Rights, Warden's Office Maytown, MWO 13B/12 QSA.
192. During the last quarter of 1877, Sellheim reported for the field that only 150 miners' rights had been issued, presumably most of these would have been issued to Chinese. 345 miners’ rights were issued to Chinese from January to July 1878 at each. AR 1877 p.11; AR 1878 p.6.
the Chinese did not improve dramatically, many deciding to spend £3 on a passage home, rather than persevere on the field. By mid-1878 the manager of the Queensland National Bank reported a perceptible decline:
...the old workings here are no longer payable and the imposition on them of the £3 for a miners right has driven away many who had that sum... [As this amount] is required for the passage back, numbers of them who have little or nothing are most afraid to venture for fear of being "run in".193
In contrast to the miners, Chinese merchants appear to have been more able to pay their increased fee. Sellheim collected business licence fees in the period October 1877 to August 1878, reflecting a fair proportion of the total number of Chinese businessmen on the field.194 However, Cooktown merchants, although unaffected directly by the increased fee, became increasingly unwilling to take the commercial risks involved with a steadily dwindling population. Because Chinese miners were no longer buying, some Chinese merchants owed carriers as much as the freight for two trips to the field.195 Other merchants became more wary, requiring prepayment for any goods forwarded. Some of the merchandise, including rice, had to be put in bond. News from Cooktown dated 20 October made the following report:
The latter fact [i.e. putting cargoes in bond], commercially speaking, does not present a very healthy state of things, but can readily be accounted for consequent upon recent Chinese legislation, and more especially that portion of it represented by the Gold Fields Act Amendment
Act of 1877. The Chinese merchants in this town, who hold, comparatively speaking, the whole of the goods recently to hand, will not forward any portion thereof inland unless the price of same is paid beforehand, as they feel convinced that their customers, represented chiefly by the Chinese engaged in mining pursuits, will perforce
193. Kent to General Manager 24 June 1878, BR/QNB/032 NBA.
194. MWO 13B/12 QSA.
195. CC 22 December 1877.
be compelled to seek fresh scenes and pastures new, as it is simply out of the question that they can afford to pay the mining fees of £3 now required of them, and which I hear is religiously enforced.196
The Gold Fields Act Amendment Act of 1877 was generally unpopular with both European and Chinese businessmen on the field. Jointly they composed a memorial to the Under Secretary for Mines complaining of its injustices: 197 not only did it disrupt trade between the port and the
field, but it also created on a declining field such as the Palmer a large concentration of Chinese paupers who threatened to become "an expensive burthen on the funds of the State."198 The Act
further dissatisfied European miners, who still feared Chinese competition on new fields where it was claimed that Chinese could still make a profit, despite the handicap of higher fees. As a result an Anti-Chinese League was formalized on 25 October 1877 to bring this point home to the government.199 In the main, the tenor of anti-Chinese meetings held in Cooktown, and the content of petitions forwarded to the government in early 1878, demanded unequivocally the repeal of the 1877 Amendment.200 News that assent had been granted
196. Q 3 November 1877.
197. References to the memorial can be found in CC 10 April 1878; also Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 March 1878, 78/48 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
198. CC 20 October 1877.
199. CC 10 November 1877. Some members of the League rose to prominence as Cooktown Municipal Councillors, viz. S. Samper and J. Josephson. Other members included Adolphus Norrie, pharmacist and first chairman of the Anti Chinese League; Benjamin Palmer, ex-miner and unsuccessful candidate at the 1876 elections; C.A. Fielberg, an editor of the Cooktown Courier and author of anti-Chinese propaganda; F.W. Ericka, Donald Land, J. Nolan and C.W. Crowley. For other names see petition to governor from merchants, storekeepers, miners, teamsters and other residents of Cooktown and the Palmer District 15 November 1877, 7715756 COL/A 249 QSA.
200. Meetings were held 25 October and 7 November 1877, 25 April and 2 May 1878, requesting prohibition of Chinese from new gold fields for up to 5 years. CC 27 October 1877; CH 31 October 1877; CC 10 November 1877, 27 April, .1, 4 May 1878; Q 4 May 1878. A petition was presented to PMG on visit to Cooktown c.21 November 1877. 1,200 signatures appeared on a petition to A.E. Kennedy, requesting a five year exclusion. Merchants et al. to A.E. Kennedy, 15 November 1877, 77/5756 COL/A 249 QSA.
to the Gold Fields Act Amendment Act of 1878 was hailed with much satisfaction on the Palmer from all quarters, both Chinese and European. Under the Act no miner's right could be issued to any Asiatic or African alien for any new gold field, for three years after its proclamation.201 Moreover it went to the heart of disputes on the field: while still openly discriminatory, at least it clarified the situation on the Palmer. Sellheim was besieged by applications from Chinese for miners' rights. While he collected only 43 miners' rights in the month preceding the enactment of the new amendment, 3560 were applied for in August 1878.202 Further the Act allowed Chinese on any new field actually discovered by them. Thus while it controlled Chinese access to new discoveries, it did not oppress Chinese already at work on the Palmer. The new legislation coincided with a rush in late July to a find on the lower Palmer, located by Chinese.
The Chinese or Lukinville rush was the first substantial alluvial rush since the Hodgkinson. Its timing promised the remaining Chinese on the Palmer a release from the poverty that they had endured under the previous amendment to the Gold Fields Act. It was Lukinville which prompted a clamour for miners' rights during August 1878, which Sellheim claimed was the "largest issue that ever has taken place during such a short period on any Australian Goldfield." 203 However, the find
was not a completely new discovery, as it was evident to Sellheim that the Chinese prospectors had been secretly at work for some time.204 With the influx of 8,000 hopeful miners, including a small number of Europeans, competition over limited resources was bound to occur, and
201. 42 Victoriae 2. An Act to further amend the Gold Fields Act 1874" so far as relates to new Gold Fields.
202. MWO 13B/12 QSA.
203. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 September 1878, 78/168 MWO 13B/G1 QSA. Sellheim received notice of the discovery 25 July.
204. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 5 August 1878, 78/157 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
there were soon rumours of a plan by Europeans to drive the Chinese off, and that fighting had broken out between the two groups. Reliable information however was not easily obtained from the lower Palmer.205 The Queenslander even alleged that a European had shot a Chinese miner in a dispute over a claim, but this cannot be verified from official reports.206 Notwithstanding rumours of angry incidents information was received that serious fighting had broken out among Chinese on or about 6 August, involving about 500-600 miners.207 This was the first of three disputes which became known as the Lukinville riots, possibly the most serious local affrays in Queensland history. The riots are still shrouded in mystery, as very little is known of the sequence of events, the numbers involved, or the issues from which the conflict arose. Certainly there were several days of violent civil disturbance, involving at least a few hundred people and resulting in a number of violent deaths. Folklore raises the Lukinville affair to the level of a major battle along ethnic lines. It may well be that a campaign was fought on the lower Palmer in the winter of 1878 which pales the Eureka Stockade into insignificance. If so, unfortunately there was no Raffaelo Carboni present to chronicle it. Over a period of two weeks, at least four deaths -- other estimates vary from 9 to 48 -- and a number of other casualties occurred.208 Spencer Browne maintained that from twenty to thirty miners were killed, and a writer under the pseudonym of "Fossicker" alleged that “a massacre" of forty-eight "Pekinese" was the outcome.209 The number involved has also been exaggerated with figures as high as 8,000-10,000. 210
205. Originally reported in the Brisbane Telegraph 25 July 1878 and Sydney Morning Herald 24 July 1878, referred to in CC 3, 7 August 1878.
206. Q 10 August 1878.
207. CC 10 August 1878; Q 10 & 17 August 1878.
208. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 September 1878, 78/168 MWO 13B/G1 QSA; F.O. Bicker, Chinese OD the Palmer, p.19.
209. Spencer Browne, Memories, p.53; Fossicker, Chinese on the Palmer, C&CMM 21, 11 (November 1945), p.209.210.Spencer Browne came to the figure of "not less than 10,000 men", Glenville Pike gave a number of 8,000. Spencer Browne, Memories, p.52; G. Pike, Old Palmer Days: Reminiscences of Harry Harbord and Spencer Browne, C &CMM 28, 2 (1952) p.37.
The 6 August incident alarmed the gold field administration considerably, as violent disorder among the Chinese had been rare. Sellheim, having only just returned from the new rush, had instructed Towner to proceed to Lukinville to set up a permanent camp. Now, with the latest telegraphic message to hand, he contacted Farrelly at Byerstown, for additional police reinforcements. Fighting broke out again over a claim on 15 August. The police reported "a roll up amongst the Chinese....There were 800 Macao against 400 Canton men. Two men were killed and several wounded." Sub-Inspector Britten later put the number of deaths at three. Four days later, another man was killed, but this time in a gambling house. Britten, who, according to the Palmer Chronicle had "struck terror" into the rioting Chinese with his Aboriginal trackers, concluded that this last death was a continuation of previous events.214
In his official assessment, Sellheim identified the primary cause as inter-group rivalry, urged on by ringleaders, and maintained that before the rush these groups had remained separate:
I regret to have to refer to some serious riots that took place amongst the Chinese at the beginning of this rush, during which four men were shot dead and many others were more or less seriously wounded. The primary cause of the disturbance was the collision of the different tribes which hitherto had beenˇ in possession of separate portions of the gold field, evidently a tacit agreement amongst themselves which had been strictly adhered to. 215
According to Sellheim, the ''Hong Kong" men had previously been in possession of the upper workings of the Byerstown-Uhrstown area, the
211. Mentioned by Sellheim in his report to Under Sec Mines 5 August 1878, 78/157 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
212. Sellheim to Farrelly 7 August 1878, 78/160 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
213. The content of a telegram sent by Kilkarney to Inspector Clohesy 16 August 1878, CC 17 August 1878.
214. Item from Parmer Chronicle reprinted in Q 19 October 1878; telegram from Sub-Inspector Britten 20 August 1878. CC 21 August 1878.
215. AR 1878 p.20.
"Tartars" were located at Jessop's Gully and the Conglomerate, and the "Macao" men were found at Stony and Sandy Creeks. 216 Presumably the "Tartars" were non-Cantonese, Mandarin speakers, sometimes referred to as "Hak'ka", a community of whom was known to have existed at Cradle Creek in 1876. 217 However, the district origins of Sellheim's ‘Hong Kong" and "Macao" men are difficult to determine, despite his allegation that the principal clashes involved these two groups. 218 On the evidence of some Chinese, Sellheim blamed "gambling vagabonds” for inciting the riots to further their own interests. The supposed ringleaders were charged with vagrancy and sentenced to Rockhampton Gaol; one of them was a prominent storekeeper and mine owner, Sam Hand, a naturalized Chinese, married to an Irish woman,' and resident in Australia for at least seventeen years. Hand had considerable experience on other North Queensland fields, and was possibly the same Hand whose photograph was taken at Gulgong in the early 1870s. 219
216. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 September 1878, 78/168 MWO 13B/G1 QSA
217. James McHenley defined Hak'ka as meaning "strange family" and identified the existence of one such group at Cradle Creek. CB 21 June 1876.
218. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 7 September 1878, 78/168 MWO 138/G1 QSA,
219. Sam Hand was born Canton probably 1846 but possibly 1836 (there are discrepancies between the information on his death certificate 1896 and his naturalization memorial 1871, the evidence of the latter is probably more reliable). Resident in Queensland from 1861* or 1870**. Married in 1863* to an Irishwoman with whom he had a family which included at least one daughter.** According to his death certificate he resided in Queensland for 26 years and 16 years in New South Wales, however in his own naturalization memorial of 1871, he stated that he had been in Queensland for a longer period. Reefer and interpreter at Middle Camp, Ravenswood in 1871 which was his address at the time of naturalization. Of his life between 1872 and 1876 little in known. It is possible that he was the same Sam Hand of Gulgong, a boarding-house keeper. Storekeeper, miner, and interpreter on the Palmer Gold Field c.1877-78, with his wife and family. Eventually resided in Geraldton (Innisfail) area as a cane farmer. Died Geraldton. 14 June 1896. See also Oaths of Allegiance, Samuel Hand (Ravenswood)12 April 1871, 1135 SCT/CF 7 QSA; Memorandum written by W.R.O. Hill 13 April 1871, Memorial of Samuel Hand, 6 March 1871, 71/1722 COL/A 157 QSA; Certificate from Registrar of Deaths 658/ 1329. See also K. Burke, Gold and Silver: photographs of Australian Goldfields from the Holtermann Collection, photograph 121. (*Naturalization memorial 1871; **Death certificate 1896).
Sellheim's charge against Hand prompted a number of Chinese businessmen to forward a petition to the governor requesting him to review the case.220 It attributed the main cause of the disturbance of 15 August to a breach in mining ethics on the part of one party of Chinese miners: the signatories to the petition were Sze Yap Chinese and alleged that the "Macao" men had locked up valuable ground by force of arms to all new comers including those referred to as "Canton" men. When the latter attempted to occupy the disputed ground. Fighting began. As the petition asserted:
That some time prior to the sixteenth day of August last past disturbances amounting to riots occurred amongst the Chinese Diggers on the recently discovered gold field at Lukinvi11e during which riots some few Chinamen were killed and a great number seriously injured and that these riots arose mainly from the fact that a comparatively few Chinamen called "Macao" men held by force of arms over one hundred men's legitimate ground on the Diggings named to the exclusion of all comers more especially Chinamen known as "Canton" men the consequences of which conduct was that some scores of Chinamen principally "Canton" men attempted to occupy the ground so illegally held and a fight ensued which was the. commencement of the riot.
Hand, they submitted, was neither vagrant nor ringleader, it being ''known to the Bench that he had a claim on Stoney Creek worth two hundred pounds and had on his person when arrested over twenty pounds in money besides jewellery." It was conceded that a "bitter feud existed between the "Macao" and the "Canton" men, but that Hand, a "Canton" man, was the "victim of the animosity of the 'Macao' men."221 In response, Sellheim stated that Hand was charged under clause 3, not clause 2, of the Vagrant Act as being a "rogue and vagabond" living off his countrymen and from his earnings as a gambler: he was the main cause of the riots ''having levied a weekly tribute of 4/0 for every cradle and 2/0 for each man installed by him in the ground, unlawfully and violently taken from the Macao men."222 To Sellheim, Hand had incited a case of claim jumping.
220. Petition of Chinese Residents Cooktown 16 September 1878, 78/846 COL/A 266 QSA.
221. ibid.
222. Statement by Sellheim attached to the petition from Chinese residents, ibid.
Mining disputes involving the locking up of ground or the jumping of claims were certainly not unusual on gold fields and if such cases could not be resolved by the individuals concerned then settlement could be sought in the warden's court. Why Hand was charged in the police court under the Vagrant Act and not in the warden's court is not clear. Certainly there would have been support among some Chinese for such remedy as there had been a meeting of another group of merchants at the store of Chow Lee and Company who publicly indicated their support for the "first holders" of the claim and advised other Chinese to "submit themselves to the Mining regulations in every way.”223 District group rivalry cannot be discounted for the Chinese themselves acknowledged its existence. As the ''Macao'' men were probably from Chung-Shan for the port of Macao was originally in that district, and the "Canton" men had the support of Sze Yap merchants, it is possible that old prejudices intensified the issue over claims.224 The role of Sam Hand in the affair was most likely accidental, although it is quite probable that, as a storekeeper, he was the creditor for one of the groups involved in the episode.
By the end of August the Chinese had resumed their normal orderliness and the lower Palmer continued as the main producing area of the Palmer, with another large settlement growing at Stewart's Camp. Another dispute occurred there over claims, but this time between Europeans and Chinese. On this occasion it was no mere rumour: a Chinese miner was shot dead, a European committed for trial for wilful murder. Sellheim expressed his anxiety at this new turn of events:
It is to be deplored that Europeans should introduce firearms at all on such occasions, as their disputes can be always settled in a few minutes by the Wardens, and it is not at all desirable that such a bad example
223. CC 28 August 1878.
224. Some of these miners were later to settle in the Cairns district. where Cathie May has identified the existence of marked antipathy between Chung-Shan and Sze-Yap groups. May, Chinese in Cairns and District. p.123.
should be set the Chinese. For should they once get into the way of producing arms during every
paltry squabble. it would be rather difficult to foresee the ultimate consequences.225
But there was to be no conviction, for this was the Rogers case, 226 where in the aftermath of Lukinville, the murderer was acquitted by the European jury to the disgust of Sellheim and St George.
As the dry season progressed, the profitability of the marginal Lukinville area diminished correspondingly and the Chinese fell back to reliable areas. Farrelly reported during October that 2.000 Chinese had already returned to Byerstown and a large number had started to dam creeks in the vicinity of Stony Creek. 27 By the end of 1878. almost 3.000 Chinese had left the field for other gold fields. Two thirds of these for the Hodgkinson. Another 2,152 returned home. 228 Lukinville was the swansong of the Palmer's alluvial phase. Nevertheless Sellheim was still confident about the field's future, believing that further finds would "give employment for many of these people [i.e. the Chinese] for years to come." 206 Yet within twelve months the population had fallen by a further 3.300. the total number of Chinese at the end of 1879 standing at 6,000. The effects of the exodus was both "serious and striking", the yield plummeting in proportion to the population decline. 230
According to Francis Gill, Sellheim's successor, the pressure on the remaining miners began to ease slightly as competition decreased. 231
225. Sellheim to Under Sec Mines 2 December 1878. 78/211 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
226. See footnote 131.
227. Farrelly to Under Sec Mines 7 November 1878. 78/195 MWO 13B/G1 QSA.
228. Of those who moved to other fields. Sellheim estimated that 2.000 went to the Hodgkinson, 400-500 to the Etheridge, 300 to Ravenswood and 150 to the Charters Towers and Cape River fields. Only 84 arrived from overseas. AR 1878 p.23.
229. AB 1818 p.20.
230. AB 1879 p.16.
231. AB 1880 p.17.
Disputes were few, although in 1879, in a faint echo of Lukinville, Ah Wah alleged that "over 100 Macow men" had overpowered "about 20 Canton men" and occupied their claim.232 Miners still conflicted with gardeners over available river bank, and one such incident in1880 had fatal consequences.233 But by this time the Palmer no longer produced the earnings which might encourage heated disputes, and new developments elsewhere were beginning to outweigh its attractions. A buried lead was found in Jessop's Gully by Chinese miners in August 1880, causing a small rush, but far greater numbers were leaving for the Coen or the Northern Territory gold fields, 234 finding work on the coastal sugar fields, or simply returning to China. Some Chinese turned to tin mining with as many as on Granite and Cannibal Creeks during the years 1880-1881. A few worked for Europeans, but most for themselves, as Chinese storekeepers were offering 3d per pound or up to £35 per ton of tin concentrate. However, mining of tin in high, granite country proved problematic as the deposits were shallow and water scarce. With the prohibition of Chinese from this branch of mining under the Mineral Lands Act of 1882, their labour could no longer be exploited and this industry too faltered.236 By the end of 1883, the Chinese population had dropped to 1043,237 a size approximating that of the first Chinese rush in mid-1874. Every attempt to describe the influx of Chinese to the Palmer has oversimplified it, for it was a complex phenomenon which occurred in
232. Ah Wan v Ah Sing, Ah Pie, Ah Long 21 April 1879, CPS 13B/P4 QSA.
233. AR 1880 p.20.
234. AR 1880 p.20; AB 1881 p.12.
235. AR 1879 p.17, 1880 p.19, 1881 pp.15-16, 18e2 p.15, leS3 pp.21-22.
236. 46 Victoriae 8.
237. AR 1883 p.20.
several phases, and in the years while it lasted there were important changes in the success rate of Chinese in gold production, their affluence and lifestyle, the reactions of the European community to their presence, and the official measures adopted to deal with them. Similarly
there is little recorded about day-to-day life among the members of this community, which is remarkable considering that for several years it constituted about a third of the population of North Queensland. Although they were vilified by European propagandists as slothful, diseased, villainous, and given to unspeakable vices, the evidence on early Chinese settlement on the Palmer suggests the majority of its members were uncommonly hard-working, sober, healthy, thrifty and law-abiding: in fact, the very model of the settlers that government immigration agents in Britain were attempting to attract to the colony. The initial European reaction was characterized by vocal indignation rather than by any effective response. Intimidatory gestures reserved some parts of the diggings to Europeans for a time, but the transitory habits of the alluvial miners yielded even these areas to the Chinese within a year. The Hodgkinson rush of early 1876 finally confirmed Chinese possession of the entire Palmer, and the dominance of the Chinese miner was reflected in the success of Chinese merchants, packers and entrepreneurs in establishing themselves in the commercial affairs of the region. The gold field administration was baffled by the Chinese influx. Apart from the warden's discretion in granting extended claims, no powers existed to thwart Chinese expansion, although individual officers employed methods of doubtful propriety in waging private campaigns against them. Preoccupied with revenue-raising because of official pressure, the administration was unable to cope with the sheer pace and volume of the inundation of diggers; the fact that the newcomers were Chinese was largely incidental. After 1876, the situation
steadily changed. It seems likely that immigrants,18,000 in number to that year, simply overwhelmed the commercial and social infrastructure that supported the Chinese community. Declining returns from the diggings undoubtedly contributed to this breakdown. Poverty, malnutrition and disease steadily increased, .and petty crime became more common.
The colonial government responded belatedly and in piecemeal fashion to the Chinese question. Increasing government charges merely exacerbated the growing destitution of many Chinese miners, and tinkering with quarantine regulations simply inconvenienced shipping; neither served to reduce the number of Chinese on the Palmer. A more intelligent response was finally adopted by proscribing Chinese access for three years after the discovery. But it was too late. The Lukinville rush and the consequent civil disturbances, remembered luridly in folklore as the heyday of the Chinese on the Palmer, in fact signalled the decline of the field as a significant gold producer, the failure of official policies, and the precarious state of the Chinese social organization under growing economic pressures. When the efficient, patient and orderly Chinese erupted into violent dispute over auriferous ground, it meant that the heady days of the Palmer were over.