Shop Wagon from the Wong’s property at Bolong, c.1870 – 1890. Wong Collection. Photograph Stephen Thompson

Collection
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.

Object Name
Wong Shop Collection.

Object/Collection Description
A collection of personal effects and shop stock owned by the Wong’s an Anglo-Chinese family from Bolong, Australia. The Collection includes ceramics, shop invoices, Manchester, grocery items etc

The discovery of gold in New South Wales from the early 1850s saw a huge influx of migrants in search of instant wealth. The primary result of the Gold Rush was that the economy boomed and, for a short time, gold outstripped wool as the Colony’s primary export. Many of the people who came in search of gold were Chinese men. Drawn from their home villages (mainly in Kwangtung) by the first gold rushes in Victoria, California and New South Wales in the 1850s, they usually arrived in organised groups of 30 to 100 men. In 1861 there were about 13,000 Chinese in New South Wales with the majority (12,200) on the goldfields. Throughout the 19th century, Chinese arrivals continued to the mining regions of New South Wales, replacing those who had returned home or left for opportunities elsewhere.

Slate pencils, pens and ink wells, c.1880 – 1890s. Wong Collection. Photograph Stephen Thompson

The Chinese diggers moved from goldfield to goldfield within New South Wales and across the border. Constantly on the move, their presence and experience are evidenced mainly from the observations and interpretation of Anglo-Australians, from archaeological digs and from objects saved by families and community members. There are few written accounts and sources from a Chinese perspective. The collection is a rare example providing a Chinese perspective on life on the goldfields. The Chinese attracted particular attention and local newspapers were quick to comment on their distinctive features, clothes, languages and habits – especially their tendency to travel en masse – their methods of transport, their diligence, tirelessness and productivity. Any admiration of their work ethic was offset by envy and resentment when times got hard. The Chinese were often scapegoated by disgruntled Anglo diggers as seen in the violent anti-Chinese riots at Turon (1853), Meroo (1854) Rocky River (1856) Tambaroora (1858) Lambing Flat, Kiandra and Nundle (1860 and 1861) and Tingha tin fields (1870). They were seen initially as oddities, later as rivals and then as threats to white Australia.

Slate pencils, pens and ink wells, c.1880 – 1890s. Wong Collection. Photograph Stephen Thompson

Both Amelia Hackney and Wong Sat had arrived in Australia in the 1850s. She was from a well-educated English family; he came from China to look for gold. By the late 1850s Wong Sat had established a mercantile business and at about this time he met Amelia Hackney. It was common for European women to deal with Chinese retailers, hawkers or market gardeners, but nothing more. Despite the taboo Sat and Amelia established a relationship that went beyond business interests. In 1864 they were married and shortly after they settled at the gold mining town of Tuena 70 kilometres south west of Bathurst. There they operated a butchery and general business selling Chinese and European goods to the local community. At Tuena Amelia gave birth to seven of their 10 children.

From left: Front: Tin of baking soda c.1890s, violin strings c.1880s, tin of ham cured herrings c.1880s, shotgun cartridge cases and packaging c.1900s, gloves c.1890- 1910. Rear: tin of Coachaline leather dressing c.1890s, ink pen nibs c.1900, tweezers c.1900, cotton threads c.1900. Wong Collection. Photograph Stephen Thompson

The Wong’s moved south to the Fullerton/Bolong area where many Irish and Scottish migrants had settled. First they rented a property and then, after Sat’s naturalisation in 1879, they purchased several hundred acres of land. They ran sheep and built a store to supply the local community of farmers and graziers.

The Wong’s store sold everything from preserved fruit picked from the family’s orchard to violin strings imported from Germany. Rural general stores like this and the Wing Hing Long & Co store at Tingha were suppliers of an extraordinary range of goods from Australia and overseas.

Washing Tailings, Ten Australian Views, c.1870s. Courtesy National Library of Australia

Despite the growing hostility towards Chinese migrants throughout Australia that would eventually manifest itself as the Commonwealth 1901 Immigration Restriction Act the Wongs remained respected members of their community. They brought their children up with an ethic of self-improvement and education. Ceramic ornaments such as this vase evidenced a familiarity with their Chinese heritage. As seen with market gardeners and merchants in the Riverina and New England area, the Wong’s experience is evidence of growing acceptance and tolerance where Chinese merchants and market gardeners had become vital and generous members of their communities. The store was closed in 1916 after Sat died. Amelia passed away in 1925. Several of their children married into local families and remained in the district. Afterwards the property was run exclusively as a sheep run.

By federation there were hundreds of family stores run by Chinese merchants dotted around New South Wales. Like many other store owners in the state, the Wong store provided goods and produce from all over the world, often on much-needed credit to be repaid after the sheep clip or the harvest went to market.

Sat and Amelia Wong, c.1860- 1870s. Photograph Stephen Thompson

The Wong collection’s historic value lies in its relationship to the themes of the gold rush experience, racial antagonism, the fear of the exotic and unknown, and ideologies that fostered Australia’s links to Britain and the development of racially discriminative Colonial policies culminating in the first act of the newly Federated Commonwealth of Australia, the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. Despite these dominant themes in Australian history sometimes the realities in the communities reflect friendship and respect that inevitably develops among different cultural groups.

The Wong collection has aesthetic significance in the design, packaging and the manufacture of a late nineteenth century consumables and Chinese material culture.

The Wong collection provides a research tool for historians to explore the culture and politics of the Europeans and Chinese in Australia.

The Wong Collection has an intangible Significance to the Chinese community to recognise and acknowledge their ancestors and to rise above the inherent racism that permeated Australia.

The Wong collection is well provenanced. It was in the possession of the Wong family from the 1860′s and was presented to the Powerhouse Museum by Robert Wong in 2003.

The Wong collection is rare because it was drawn from a specific rural store on the Wong family’s property at Bolong and from their and personal effects. The Wong collection is rare also because it alludes to contradictions to the omnipresent anti-Chinese attitudes in late nineteenth century Australia that manifested themselves in the Lambing Flat riots and racists colonial legislation and the acceptance and assimilation of Chinese families in many regional communities.

The Wong collection represents the experience of the 19th century Chinese on the goldfields and in regional New South Wales. The myths surrounding the Chinese created largely on the goldfields provided the seeds for the ideology for one of the first acts on the newly founded Commonwealth of Australia, the Immigration Restriction Act 1901.

The condition of the Wong collection is good given the rarity and fragile nature of the fabric.

The Wong collection is a powerful interpretive tool in communicating the experience and the treatment of the Chinese on the diggings, Chinese grocer’s stores and Chinese/ European relationships and families in the late 19th early 20th centuries.