Happy New Year! Australia and China have had their ups and
downs, but Australia’s relations with China go back a long way,
to the beginning of white settlement. The first ships to bring
convicts to Botany Bay dropped their living cargoes in New South
Wales, then headed north to Canton [Guangzhou] to buy tea.
Sydney became a port for both British and American ships in the
China trade, and a trickle of Chinese began to settle here from
the 1830s. But the first big immigration came in the 1850s,
during the gold rush. One of my favourite pieces of trivial
information is that one member of the Kelly Gang, Joe Byrne,
spoke Cantonese. Joe Byrne was born in 1857 at Woolshed, near
Beechworth, in an area, the Ovens Goldfields, with a large
population of Chinese gold diggers. As a little boy, Joe must
have played on the diggings, and with the ease of small
children, he picked up the local Cantonese from his neighbours.
We don’t know how well he spoke the language. Joe is usually
seen as the intellectual of the gang, sin