- From
- 1854
- To
- 1930s
Details
The town of Linton, some 34 kilometres south-west of Ballarat in Victoria, became established after gold was discovered in the area in 1854. It was situated on the western edge of what became known as the Woady Yallock-Smythesdale Goldfield. The first gold discovery is said to have occurred on Emu Hill, a squatting run originally taken up by Scottish immigrants, the Linton family, in 1839. The original settlement was known as Linton’s Diggings (or just Linton’s) in a hilly area about two kilometres north of the present town. The latter was officially surveyed in 1860 after many houses and shops had moved there following the discovery of gold on what was then known as Surface Hill.
The Chinese of Linton appear to have come with the gold rush, there being no evidence of any Chinese in the district prior to this. The first official record of their presence in Linton is in the first history of the town written for the 1939 centenary celebrations by Councillor H.P. Bennett. He quotes a report in the Ballarat Star in October 1855 that there were 1000 Chinese at the ‘wire fence’ at Linton’s northern boundary and also states that a further 120 Chinese arrived overland from Adelaide in June 1856. By August the Ballarat Star reported that a further 1000 Chinese had arrived from Adelaide. Supple notes that, as miners rushed from one discovery to another in the 1850s, ‘2000 Chinese diggers remained at Linton when most of the diggers departed for Mt Ararat in August 1857.’ By June 1858, Supple notes that ‘Linton had a population of 2000 including 400 Chinese’.
As early as 1856, Wet Flat, in amongst the gullies where the first gold discoveries were made, was being called Chinaman’s Flat. It appears to have remained an area where Chinese miners concentrated their efforts and established a settlement, and is still called Chinaman Flat on contemporary maps of the district. Chinese miners reworked the shallow deposits in these old gullies, which, by 1860, were said to be ‘exclusively occupied by the Chinese who appeared to be doing well’. Bennett notes that there were several Chinese stores, such as Ah Quong’s at Wet Flat. The local school teacher Mr J.H. Roberts ‘held church services here among the Chinese who spoke English fairly well.’ There was another Chinese community on the southern side of Linton township, on the Geelong Road, where according to Bennett there was a big Chinese store, run by Sin Kee and Wong Chung’s store and gold buying business. A 1989 history of Linton quotes James Wong Chung’s granddaughter, Mrs Mabel Young Chung, remembering that, ‘there were great blocks of gold, we played with it. I would run sovereigns between my fingers, but twice in six months he was robbed by bushrangers and went broke’.
Apart from these two communities, one on the northern side of the town, one on the southern edge, there is also evidence that the Chinese were not just confined to the periphery of town life. In the front garden of what, from the 1890s, was Dr. Donaldson’s house in the main street, there was a shed that is believed to have been used by Chinese miners to store machinery and to enter their underground mine. On the other side of the main street, on the corner of Gillespie St, a Chinese merchant called Ah Hoy had a store in which a fire broke out in 1875. Signatures in the record books of the local Bank of New South Wales show that a number of Chinese opened bank accounts there after it was established in 1860.
In the flooding of the Argyle mine in 1881, regarded as ‘the worst disaster on the Linton goldfield,’ one Chinese miner drowned, one was badly injured, and eight spent five or six days underground before being rescued. As Bill Cameron recalled in 1939, ‘The eight men in the chute had an alarming time. The water rose 27 feet in the main shaft and they soon became short of air. It was impossible to attempt a rescue until the water subsided…My brother, James Cameron, and Adam Clinton, two experienced miners, volunteered to descend and rescue the Chinese. Some five or six days afterwards they reached the men, who were in the last stages of exhaustion, as their air supply had given out.’
After the demise of mining in the district, some Chinese remained as market gardeners. According to Bennett the last of the Chinese huts, just off the Carngham road at Wet Flat or Chinaman’s Flat had disappeared by 1939. He described ‘Jimmy’ as the last Chinese in the district and very popular. ‘Jimmy’ had a market garden on Snake Valley Road in the Chinaman Flat area. He probably died some time in the 1930s and is buried in the Linton cemetery. There are two surviving photographs of him.
Today, the only material evidence of the Chinese history of Linton is the Chinese section of the cemetery, containing eighty graves. Many of these have lost their headstones and little known about the individuals buried there. Closer historical research, however, can reveal something of the lives of these people. A look at the cemetery records, for instance, shows that it was from 1872 onwards, after the first Chinese burial in 1864 that Chinese burials became common, many of them increasingly (as in the European population) the result of mining accidents. Nineteenth-century inquests reveal that in the twenty-five years between 1870 and 1895, eighteen, or one third, were for Chinese men. Of these, half the deaths were found to be the result of natural causes, the other half resulting from mining accidents (five), suicide (three) and one from starvation. Similarly, reference to birth and marriage records reveals Chinese integration into this small town through intermarriage.
While the conventional historical understanding is that, ‘as the gold petered out most moved on,’ a close look at the historical record reveals the significant presence of the Chinese in and around Linton for many years afterwards. If one takes into account that there were similar Chinese populations in most of the surrounding towns on the Woady Yallock goldfields, the Chinese contribution to the life of the district might well be considerable.
Sources used to compile this entry: Bennett, H.P., of the Linton centenary, 1839-1939, Linton, Vic.: Linton Centenary Celebrations Committee, 1939. Linton and District comp. Looking back over 100 years, 1839-1939: a brief historical review on the settlement and development of Linton and District. Historic souvenir Historical Society, A Pictorial History of Linton, Linton, Vic.: Linton and District Historical Society, 1st ed. 1989, 2nd ed., 2001. Linton and District Historical Society, Heritage Walk: a walk through Linton’s past, n.d. Linton Cemetery Trust Records, 1860- 1945. Manuscript, State Library Victoria. Marriage Register of St Paul’s Church of England, Linton. PROV, VPRS 24, Coroner’s Court Inquest Files, Digger Inquest Index, 1840-1900, Linton. Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Melbourne. Birth reg no. 14599. Supple, Ray. Historic Goldmining Sites in the Southern Mining Divisions of the Ballarat Mining District: Report on Cultural Heritage. Victorian Goldfields Project, 1999.
Prepared by: Jill Wheeler, University of Melbourne
Related Subjects
Archival Collections
Linton & District Historical Society
- Linton & District Historical Society collection; Linton & District Historical Society. Details
Images
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- Title
- Ginge, Chinese hawker in Linton
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1900
- Place
- Australia - Victoria - Linton
- Details
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- Title
- Jimmy in his market garden on Snake Valley Road, Linton
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1900
- Place
- Australia - Victoria - Linton - Snake Valley Road
- Details
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- Title
- Jimmy selling vegetables in Linton township
- Type
- Photograph
- Date
- c. 1900
- Place
- Australia - Victoria - Linton
- Details
Created: 4 November 2005, Last modified: 25 April 2006
