Ms BURNET (Clark) – On Monday night, 5 August, the Deputy Leader of the Greens, Vica Bayley, and I attended Government House to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Chinese Community Association of Tasmania (CCAT).
The history of the Chinese community in Tasmania stretches back at least to the 1830s. They often settled in the north-east of Tasmania to mine. People with Chinese ancestry today make up about two per cent of the population, but back in the heyday of tin mining between 1886 and 1896 – which would have been a pretty hard yakka, and without great prices on tin – the Chinese population in some parts outnumbered their European counterparts 10:1.
According to the historian, Dr Jai Patterson:
In Tasmania, Chinese miners were generally better treated than on the mainland diggings. They were respected as law-abiding citizens and for their ability to work hard. They also took their share of community responsibility, actively raising funds for local schools and hospitals. Many Europeans in the remote mining towns joined in Chinese New Year celebrations and formed close friendships with the ‘Celestials’, as the Chinese were known.
Chinese businessmen in Launceston were also well known, and a Chinese carnival was instrumental in raising money to extend the Gorge pathway to the First Basin.
At the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in Launceston you can find the Guan Di Temple, known as the ‘Joss House’, where artefacts from many Chinese temples across the north-east tin-mining region are preserved.
This week I also visited the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery exhibition entitled ‘Home: Here and Now’, and this is running until 3 November, and I suggest that everybody gets along to it if they can. The exhibition explores the history and celebrates the contribution of members of the Chinese community in Tasmania as far back as the 1880s, but also of more recent arrivals who now call Tasmania home.
As part of the exhibition, you can see an embroidered silk handkerchief belonging to Jan Everett, whose great-grandfather moved to the north east of Tasmania in the 1870s and who grew up in the beautiful north-east part of the state. Jan travelled to China some years ago and incredibly, was able to locate her grandfather’s village, using family lineage that had been woven into the handkerchief on display.
I return to speak about the Chinese Community Association of Tasmania, of which Jan Everett is an active member. The Chinese Community Association of Tasmania is a vibrant organisation engaged in the local, educational and ancestral interests of its members, from new arrivals to Tasmania through to those who can trace their Tasmanian Chinese family back through many generations.
The association engages the wider community through events and activities. I am sure members have been to many of these events and networks, with similar organisations at major events contributing greatly to social cohesion. They also carry out important work hosting lunches for members of the Tasmanian Chinese community at their North Hobart clubhouse, as well as organising Lunar New Year Festival celebrations, the annual Dragon Boat Festival and many other cultural and community events. Their website shows a group trip to one of the original farm holdings, showing the market gardens and a very old tractor. Market gardens and fresh produce were a significant feature of the Chinese community, as were the restaurants. They still are to a degree.
As a Greens spokesperson for multicultural communities, I wish CCAT well for this 55th anniversary and for the future.
