An Environmental History of Australian Rainforests until 1939 by Warwick Frost

Author:Warwick Frost [Frost, Warwick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Australia & New Zealand, Nature, Ecology
ISBN: 9781000173741
Google: V_DqDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-06-10T01:38:50+00:00

Chinese farming in Australia

For a long time, the historiography of Chinese settlement in Australia emphasised their otherness. The Chinese were isolated and marginalised sojourners or temporary migrants, whose numbers fell away after the Gold Rushes as a result of trenchant opposition and harsh regulations (Cronin, 1982; Markus, 1979). Comparisons with the Chinese experience in other settler societies, such as California, reinforced this negativity (Chan, 1986; Markus, 1979). However, in the twenty-first century, there has been a sharp change in direction in the literature. This has been particularly facilitated by the biennial Dragon Tales Conferences focussing on the history of the Chinese in Australia. This new literature tells a much more positive story, seeing the Chinese as successful settlers rather than sojourners and emphasising the complexity of interactions between Whites and the Chinese (Boileau, 2017; Frost, 2002, 2016; Reeves, 2010; Reeves and Mountford, 2011; Reynolds, 2003; Wilton, 2004). This chapter follows this new direction, exploring how the Chinese were important to the clearance and settlement of the Queensland rainforests.

While there has been a tendency to view Chinese farming as arriving fully-formed in Australia as a result of the Gold Rushes, it is better to take an alternative view of it evolving through three historical stages (Frost, 2002: 116). The first, from 1850 to 1880, was of initial adjustment. The second, from 1880 to 1900, was a period of specialising in intensive high-value cropping, particularly market gardening. The third, from around 1900 to 1920, was a period of relative decline as the White Australia policy took hold and the earlier waves of migrants aged.

Though a small number of Chinese came earlier as indentured labourers, the great influx of Chinese in the 1850s and the 1860s was due to the Gold Rushes. In this way, the pattern in Australia was very similar to other nineteenth century Gold Rush economies around the Pacific Rim, such as the United States (particularly California), Canada and New Zealand. The Chinese were akin to their European counterparts in that their main aim was of gaining wealth quickly through gold mining. Around 50,000 Chinese came to Australia in the 1850s and 1860s and most were from Canton in Southern China. Chain migration was much in evidence: young men travelling in and then maintaining groups based on family, village and clan connections. Recruitment, financing and travel arrangements typically occurred in China, with little involvement by Australian entrepreneurs or migration agents. On the goldfields, the Chinese worked their claims in self-managing groups, a common arrangement that would stand them in good stead when they moved into agriculture.

In the 1860s, gold production began to decline. Many Chinese miners found themselves forced to work in agriculture to supplement their income. In summer, hot and dry weather tended to restrict alluvial gold mining, which needed regular water supplies to wash the ore and separate the gold. While they waited for autumnal rains, many miners engaged in casual labour and the Chinese were no different. As European farming expanded with the availability of cheap land

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