This Saturday 13 April 10.30 - 11.30 AM the GSV hosts a talk by Robyn Ansell on Chinese-Australian family history. It is not too late to book for her fascinating presentation. Robyn is a founding member of the Chinese-Australian Family Historians of Victoria.
You can book at the GSV website HERE.
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Even if you have a Euro-centric ('white') Australian heritage going back far enough, to pre-Federation Australia, you may well have links with the story of the Chinese in Australia.
I have long-treasured a couple of ubiquitous glazed ginger jars that were always amongst the vases when I was young. Apparently they were a leftover relic from my grandfather. My father's chance remark once, that his father had spent his youth running around in the Chinatown of Bendigo, made them special to me. Years later I came across other family ancestors who were at the Mount Alexander (Castlemaine) goldfields in 1855. At that time one writer calculated that there were six Chinese for every five Europeans alluvial miners there. My great-great grandfather left probably to follow the gold to Yass, NSW and this put him there at the time of the infamous Lambing Flat Riots in 1861. You can learn a lot about the times from the history of the Chinese in Australia.
Today my son and grandchildren are members of the Chinese Youth Society of Melbourne and will be performing inside lions at the coming Bendigo Easter Festival.
Bill Barlow
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