The SBS series New Gold Mountain filmed at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Victoria, makes much our stereotypes of the time: the honourable, business-savvy yet inscrutable Chinese, the sturdy, passionate Irish, the malevolent, bumbling English overlords, the wise Indigenous. While these tropes make for good, politically-correct drama in a murder mystery, our cultural truth is nuanced and more fascinating.
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One of those less-examined truths is the remarkable role of Ballarat's Chinese-descent community in union representation, a role which spanned generations and remains present today.
Researcher and historian Jenny Beacham sought out one of the real treasures of the City of Ballarat's library to uncover this history: a series of interviews conducted with people born between 1890 and 1915 with substantial connections to Ballarat.
Under the supervision of then chief librarian Peter Mansfield, 196 interviews were conducted in the 1980s. Interviewees were asked similar questions about their lives and experiences. Stored for many years, the tapes have been digitised and the interviewees' voices come down to us as, familiar yet with the different cadences and usages of time.
Although there is a predominance of interviews with high-profile public figures in Ballarat, over 50 of them are with people who worked in mills, factories, behind shop counters, in schools, hospitals, and as SP bookies, Ms Beacham says.
"In their own voices, they tell of a tight-knit, clearly-identifiable class united by churches and pubs. Several leading trade unionists tell of their lives. Many talk of a space-specific identity: not only were they were proud to be "Ballarat" but they were also from the "East", identifying clearly that this was opposed to being from the "West", thereby reflecting a class division that had been predetermined by municipal boundaries until the 1920s."
Several of the interviews are with descendants of Chinese immigrants to Ballarat. One of the family names which stands out is Chung.
"I was born in 1912 and I can remember the mine working out the back. We used to climb up the mullock heaps. They're not like they are now, they were just bare as they came out of the ground. You understand there was no shrubbery, no grass and nothing on them.
"All the whole area around there was just in that state, and we used to climb up there and watch the wheels going up, one turning one way or the other turning the other way. You see as one cage came up the other one would be going down. That was the way they used to do that sort of thing. Some of the cages used to bring up water, they didn't have the sump system they have nowadays.
'They had a sump down there and bring the water up and used to empty it outside of the mine shaft. But I can remember when they used to take the ore out along the corduroy road along there. That's named Prince Regent Road there now, but used to be corduroy. They were saplings from the forest and to stop the wheels from sinking in the mud in the wet weather and that, there was corduroy all the way across.
"They used to pack the battery all the way up, it was the Woah Hap Canton but is now the Mee Hing battery just of Milverton's Lane where it was treated. There were quite a few batteries. Of course the main one was Pierces. Pierces Battery I believe, Isaac Pearce.
'He was a man of great substance. That was the big one and that was the one that we mostly heard when we were kids. It would be thumping all night and perhaps when they changed the ore, dead silence made you sort of wake and stir, you know when we were kids because of the sudden silence." Charlie Chung, talking about his childhood.
Christine Wicking is 91. Her memory of life in Ballarat is vivid, funny and beautifully detailed. The daughter of Mabel and niece of Charles Chung lives in Geelong now, but spent her childhood at her grandmother's home 'Victory' on Geelong Road, still standing today.
Mabel and Charles were interviewed for the 1980s project, which Christine remembers, as she does their personalities and politics.
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"Uncle Len was the president of the textiles union; uncle Charlie with the railway union, and they were communists; they were in the Communist Party in Ballarat. And when we were children, they used to bring over all these envelopes they used to give out. It was quite an elite club, the Communist Party. There were doctors and lawyers and quite well-off people as members.
"We were introduced to that sort of thing very early in life. That's how we knew they were communists. We helped fold up (pamphlets) and put them in the envelopes. When I started working, and Uncle Len was president of the textile union, we realised they were somebody."
"They wanted to look after the working man, to bring forward the force of the working man; that the working man had just as much right as anybody. That was their motto of the time: the working man was the main thing of the earth, and made things happen."
Christine's widowed mother Mabel lived with her mother Margaret (nee Holderhead), in a separate house on the Geelong Road property, after her husband, a Bendigo Chinese herbalist, died in 1932.
Mabel had seven daughters and two sons, but her two boys and then her husband died in near succession, leaving her pregnant and needing somewhere to live. She built a house on the land at Geelong Road.
"I was one of the one of the babies and Dad died I was only two and a half," Christine says.
"I don't really remember the life in Bendigo. He was quite a well off man being a herbalist doctor. but in Ballarat Mum went home with her eight daughters to her mother. My father had bought my mother a pianola, so she sold that in Bendigo and used that money she had to build her little three bedroom weatherboard house in Nana Chung's grounds. And that's where we were brought up. All I remember was child was Chungs: all my uncles, Uncle Charlie, they were like all like fathers to us, because we were such good little children.
"We did have a lovely life between the two houses. Nana owned all the land, there was a big garden plot, we had all fresh vegetables on hand all the time. Nana and mum bought a cow, so as children we would have fresh milk. I can honestly say we had friends everywhere."
Q. In every Chinese home, there would have been grandparents and the parents and the kids, that would have been the normal thing?
A. Yes, that's right. They'd look after their older people, you know, grandfathers, grandmothers, they'd always look after them. We had ours over there until they died. Granny died at 79, I think. We used to go to St Alipius School. He had had a gambler's shop, we didn't think it was wrong or anything like that. It was dominoes or something like that, and we call in.
Of course mother never knew, she'd be cross with us. We asked him to give us threepence each to buy chocolate. He never had no notes whatever, all money. Yes, they didn't harm anyone. You know what I mean. All they wanted was to be left alone, that's all.
When Dad used to bring home the gold, oh my goodness I will always remember it, all shining bright, you know, all new out of the mint. Well that's gone too.
Q. How many men would have been working in the mine, when you your father was manager?
A. Oh, I couldn't tell you that. Oh a good few. You see, there was dayshift and there was afternoon shift, there were two shifts. And when one lot went home, the other lot went on, like this. They were all Chinese, of course. The Woah Hawp Canton, I told you the Chinese had bought it. Yes good heavens yes.
Q. So as well is being market gardeners and herbalists, they were miners too?
A. No mistake about it. They were the lovely days.
Q. Were there any Chinese women here?
A. To be honest I don't think there were many here. They mostly married Irish people. Nearly everybody's mother was Irish. Grandmother married my grandfather, he was Chinese. It appears a lot of them came out here to work. There was no work for them, they got married and all the offspring are all over the place.
Q. Chinese women weren't allowed to come here?
A. No, no. And they were very strict about it too. Yes, well the wealthy Chinese he could go home to China and pick up a wife. But he'd have to pay the government a £100 every Christmas while she was here.
Every year, yes, they'd have to pay up. But I know they used to have to pay. And of course a lot of them would go home when they weren't feeling well. They all went to China on a voyage, and came back as good as anything.
Q. Did you ever feel any attachment to China, yourself?
A. I often wondered, he promised me he would take me home, but it never came. He died. Yes, I would have liked to have gone. Oh yes. I knew all the other wives that are married to Chinese, have all been home to China, with their husbands.
I know a lot of them used to come to see our father, and he used to look after them in every way. Of course when they'd be going home, our father taught us "Okai, Fat, Toy, Ping Nam Shuk", that means Goodbye, Lots of luck, Hope you will have a son, and Mr" some of them were wealthy. Very wealthy.
But when they were sick, they'd go by boat, they reckon on the water on the trip like that it would make them better. And they used to come back. No mistake about it.
Q. Would most of the Chinese people here, around this part, would they have done fairly well?
A. They all had enough money to make nice homes for themselves, yes. Especially around Golden Point that's where a lot of them are. Of course that's the third generation.
Q. You talked about the Chinese huts, you met mentioned them, what were they like?
A. Just huts, that's all they were, you know what I mean. They used to have a dirt floor, that's all the shops right in front of the Red Lion right up to Humffray Street. They were all along like that. Oh they used to go back a lot. Yes, they'd go back three or four rooms, right back.
Q. And would they keep warm during the winter?
A. Oh, they had blankets, and not only that they had things to wear. All their jackets and pants had wadding inside of it,. And they had a sort of a slipper, it was that thick the soul of it, but it was not leather and the top of it was sort of silk.
Rice was their main meal. They can have rice with all sorts. Pork, they loved pork, they had everything and you could cook it every different way. Dad used to cook our meals sometimes.
The vegetables they weren't cooked too much, just barely, the goodness still in them. We English, we cook our food too much. The way they used to cook was lovely. They drink of wine of their own. They don't drink the white man's drink.
They've got a wine of their own. But none of the women ever drank, because it was too strong. They used to drink the Chinese tea all the time 'gum-char". They didn't drink coffee, only tea. And a little wine with the tea, that's all. They never got drunk. Never. Never in your life.
Q. Would the Chinese have any contact with the police at all?
A. Not that I know of. But I know a lot of Chinese used to come home, so that dad could interpret when they had to go to court over something. But what, I don't know.
Dad was interpreter, he had a private tutor himself, his father was wealthy then. He never went to school, he had this great big book and he used to look through it. The English words and the Chinese words. A big dictionary. Yes, he used to go to court with them, often.
I think that Dad was more fully Chinese than only half. When the Chinese died over there in the garden, Dad used to be with the driver, and had little bits of paper and he'd drop it all along right up to the cemetery. That was so the dead person could see the way back, if he wanted to.
He was real Chinese, my dad, yes. The men, they used to go down to the Chinese stores every night time, talk, just talk, and it's all about all I know. Because my husband used to too. All and they'd just come together and talk."
Mabel Chung , interviewed in the 1980s.
Charlie and Len Chung joined the Ballarat Trades and Labour Council, and were unionists all their lives. Charlie and Len Chung, and Harold Foo, another Communist Party of Australia stalwart and president of the BT&LC in 1974; were all of Chinese ancestry and all had ASIO files.
Len Chung was secretary of the Textile Workers' Union for some years and became president of the BT&LC in 1964. While the trade union movement was a vigorous supporter of the White Australia policy it never sat too comfortably with the BT&LC.
Ballarat had an active Chinese community who continued to work in many roles as well as sell vegetables and herbal remedies to residents, attend the churches, and generally participate in public life. Its local football team, Golden Point, was known as the "Rice-Eaters."
"A group of workers from Ballarat were being sent up on the Rocklands Dam to work, yet people from those districts were coming down to Ballarat to work and it seemed a deliberate attempt to keep the workers from organising and uniting and having a common front.
Q. What did you do about it?
A. We had our meeting on the Friday night, Friday night shopping in those days and we had a meeting at the Galloway Monument, and the council in those days was...well, fairly reactionary I put it bluntly, in those days. They wouldn't give permission so the Trades Hall says ,"Well, we're going to have it anyway, that Galloway Monument belongs to the workers. "The Eight Hours movement.
So we did, anyway the police were sent here in force and incidentally was a Labor government at the time, Ned Hogan. His political squad were sent up, and my word they let the batons fly when the workers moved from the Trades Hall. We were made to walk down the footpath round the State Savings Bank and down the footpath as just a disorganised mob.
We weren't allowed to march or anything like that. I remember the workers being pulled off the Monument when they got up to speak, the police were there ready to pull them off. They were sending the relief workers away from Ballarat to work out their particular jobs like that. With money that had been extracted from the workers themselves.
They set up three taxes. When I was only 17 I was paying three taxes, Federal tax, State and Unemployment Relief tax and that latter one was especially for the relief of unemployed.
Q. Oh, a levy on all workers for the non-workers?
A. Yes. And that was fairly typical.
Q. That night of the protest or demonstrations were a lot of people around? There would have been Friday night?
A. Yes, yes. Of course the trams used to run those days and you had to push your way through the crowd scattered over the footpath. Oh yes, there was a good turn up, I tell you.
Q. And how did everyone else react to the police?
A. Well the press, as always, was opposed to it. They always put the worst side as far as the workers were concerned, it was never a fair press coverage in my opinion, and we were considered to be rabble.
Of course there were some communists on the Trades Hall Council but only a sprinkling of them. The public was sympathetic but they didn't seem to be prepared to be in involved in those days."
Charlie Chung on the struggle for workers and unemployed rights in Ballarat in the 1930s.
"When Uncle Charlie retired, he went to China," Christine Wicking says.
"And they went right up to the borders of Russia. And he went from Vladivostok, right through to the capital of Russia.
"And when they found out that it was a union and a railroad man, they treated him like royalty. Every station, they stopped that. All the newspapers interviewed him. He had a wonderful time.
"He loved trains. He went all over the world on trains, including taking cousins and aunts with him," says Charles's grand-nephew Christopher Dower, Christine's son.
"He was very adventurous. So he goes to all sorts of wonderful places, taking photographs. He was a very strong football supporter. He introduced me to following the Geelong football club, he would buy us a membership ticket every year, me and my brother, and we would go to every Geelong football game and along with some of their other relatives. So he was a very, very strong influence on our lives."