This study provides – for the first time – a comprehensive understanding of the Chinese involvement in Victoria’s colonial fishing industry and changes historical perceptions of the Chinese experience in colonial Australia. The Australian gold-rush period provides a backdrop to explore the unique character of colonial contact between two diverse cultures. This project demonstrates a much greater complexity of colonial-period social and economic organisation and cross-cultural (Chinese–European) interaction than was previously known to have existed.

By taking a step back from the theoretical framework of changing social organisation which is commonly used to consider the issue of colonial encounters and instead identifying the strategic actions of Chinese individuals and the social structures of small groups that combined to facilitate change, a number of new areas of interest have been identified. Importantly, this approach has also opened avenues for the consideration of interactions between colonial-period Chinese and European people in comparative studies of other complex societies.

Overseas Chinese society in colonial Australia displayed three broad categories of social class rankings: a wealthy minority of influential socially elite (the merchants), a group of middle-class workers or headmen (the merchant aspirants), and the workforce majority (the lower classes). A range of diverse interactions was identified and some of the complexities in Victoria’s overseas Chinese social system revealed. This allows a deeper understanding of overseas Chinese systems and opens opportunities further to explore social and economic (beneficial and adverse) organisation and cross-cultural interactions of Chinese and European societies in colonial Australia. Importantly, Europeans are shown to have benefited from interactions with colonial-period overseas Chinese populations a point that has been largely overlooked in previous Australian, New Zealand and American research.

The research approach in this project has enabled a new perspective on overseas Chinese activities in Australia, unlike previous research methodology that generally saw the Chinese as victims of Australia’s restrictive laws and persistent racism and whose principal actions were in response to these negatives. Regardless of any restrictive laws or racism, overseas Chinese people were successful in establishing large-scale commerce other than mining. These conclusions highlight the need in modern archaeology for further theory-based thematic investigations.

Evidence for Chinese fish-curing establishments in Victoria, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania, leaves no doubt that Chinese people were heavily involved in Australia’s colonial fishing industry. Documentary evidence shows overseas Chinese activity in Victoria’s fishing industry by 1856. However, Chinese people were probably participating in Victoria’s fishing industry as early as 1855, with the mass arrival of Chinese goldminers. Primary documentation and material remains have shown the types of fish Chinese fish curers cured, the preferred species, how they obtained them, cured them and even how they were cooked and eaten.

Fish-curing establishments were not general retailers. Chinese cured fish was sold primarily to the overseas Chinese population in Australia, markets in China and other opportunistic bulk buyers. Fish-curing establishments were capitalist endeavours that used the Chinese kinship system of obligation to procure, process and supply bulk-cured fish very cheaply. This provided overseas Chinese people – particularly those working on the goldfields – with an abundant food source and helped to maintain cultural continuity in the Chinese diet and way of life. This study shows evidence to support the notion that financial gain from fish-curing activities went largely to a select group of controlling Chinese merchants, with the lower-class labourers working to pay off their debt bondage and receiving little if any monetary payment for their services.

An examination of how much fish the Chinese fish curers in colonial Australia were processing annually and the profits this generated provides convincing evidence of a far greater level of participation by overseas Chinese people in colonial Australia fishing activities than previously realised. The annual sales from Chin Ateak, just one of the Chinese traders in Australian cured fish (and there were many), amounted to almost ten times the annual quantities of fish sold through Sydney and Victoria’s European markets combined. Such figures are far out of proportion to the size of the Australian colonial economy and show the enormous scale of Chinese business in colonial Australia.

Chinese participation in Australia’s colonial fishing industry is shown to have greatly aided the growth and continued survival of European commercial fishing activities, especially in regions distant to major markets. Opportunities for European fishermen arose through the Chinese need for bulk quantities of fresh fish for 154curing. Chinese fish curers established themselves as reliable buyers of the fish European fishermen caught.

The multi-disciplinary approach taken in this study has provided new knowledge of Victorian Chinese fishing sites, their internal workings, structure, functioning, layout and the associated material culture. Material and documentary evidence suggests that Chinese fish-curing establishments in Australia – from the late 1850s to early 1870s – were owned by Chinese merchants and staffed by a headman and a team of credit–ticket labourers. This project identifies for the first time that the credit–ticket system of procuring labour was critical to the establishment of Chinese fishing and fish-curing activities in Australia.

There is no doubt that a proportion of the Chinese population in colonial Australia did not go to the goldfields. Rather, the credit–ticket system was used by merchant bosses to procure labour for their business activities including the supply of food and other requirements to Chinese and Europeans on the goldfields. This cheap, willing supply of labour underpinned early overseas Chinese industry. Moreover, it enabled the overseas Chinese in Australia to be largely self-sufficient, maintain healthy diets and obtain and sustain niche positions in commercial ventures. The strong cultural cohesion of overseas Chinese groups and the authority of a few merchants over the lower-class majority enabled vast amounts of labour to be assembled, moved and utilised (although the internal mechanisms of this remain poorly understood). Through appointing lower-ranking Chinese people to undertake specific tasks – often reflecting kinship relationships – Chinese merchants shaped the early (1850s to 1870s) Chinese communities in colonial Australia.

This system of labour procurement and utilisation was prevalent in Victoria (and Australia more broadly) for only a limited period. After approximately 1870, significant change in the overseas Chinese system of social and economic organisation is apparent. While cultural kinship systems remained, the rush for gold was fading and the number of Chinese people seeking to enter Australia declined. This eroded the market for (and huge profits attained from) supplying primary produce and weakened merchants’ grip on cheap overseas Chinese labour resources. By the early 1900s, all commercial Chinese fish-curing activity in Australia had ceased.

As the Australian gold rush continued to lose momentum, individual Chinese people began taking up self-employment opportunities made available through merchants divesting themselves of primary produce business ventures. The self-employed overseas Chinese broadened their market by selling fresh produce to European populations. At Chinaman’s Point, Port Albert, in the late 1800s, it appears that at least two Chinese people either moved into an abandoned fish-curing site, or leased or made some other arrangement with the founding Chinese merchant to take over the establishment.

An examination of the material remains at Chinaman’s Point assisted to build a picture of the site’s history, how it worked and how the occupants lived and has facilitated an understanding of relationships between workers, headmen and merchants. Historical documentation and theoretical hypotheses help explain the links between Australian colonial fish-curing sites and the local, regional and global overseas Chinese community. In their host society, the overseas Chinese fish curers (and overseas Chinese people generally) maintained many aspects of their own cultural system of social and economic organisation, including social classes, interpersonal relationships, support systems and the scope for personal advancement.

The significance of this research is its ability to reveal previously unknown aspects of Australia’s colonial past, to shed further light onto the role that overseas Chinese people played in the development of Australia and to demonstrate how archaeology can assist in understanding the complex nature of human interactions during colonial encounters. This has been achieved by examining material remains and the historical documentary record and is a further progression in the interpretation of archaeological research and theory.

The discovery of a Chinese fish-curing establishment presented a timely opportunity to test the value of this methodology, particularly in facilitating a more complete appreciation of the complexities of colonial society. This project has been successful in bringing to light further information on the role of overseas Chinese people in colonial Australia.

HYPOTHETICAL RE-CREATION

If a newspaper reporter had visited the site during the 1860s and written about his or her experience, the narrative would probably read something like this: Facing forward to obtain the best possible view and rowing in the standing position, the distance from Port Albert Pier to Long Point took only a few minutes. The bay location and mid-summer, early morning light, had, as planned, enabled the best possible view of the Chinese fish-curing establishment. As the boat drew nearer to the working site, three separate areas became apparent – one domestic and two working. Farthest from the water’s edge, a large and well-built dwelling takes priority among several otherwise makeshift lean-tos and open-sided shelters. Most of these structures are stacked 155to the roof with hessian sacks filled to bursting point with sun-dried fish. Next to these sacks are a number of sealed casks containing fish that have been pickled in the Chinese fashion. These closed bags and sealed casks represent the finished cured product ready for transport. Both sun-dried and pickled fish are rumoured to fetch a high price among the Chinese on the goldfields. Dominating the site’s central area are several rows of fish-drying tables, 30 ft (10 m) or more in length, 7 ft (2 m) wide and supported by a framework of trestles. On the water’s edge, in front of the drying tables, a slipway has been constructed upon which two small boats are receiving repair and general maintenance. To one side of the slipway is a vast number of brine-filled timber casks, a support for hanging fishing nets to dry and a set of weighing scales suspended from a timber frame. A substantial jetty traverses from one side of the slipway and drying tables, over a swamp area and ends near the main channel of the waterways. Apart from the house, the site’s appearance is shabby. Local timbers cut roughly from the tree and lashed together by rope or any other means hold structures together. A pile of household waste, un-harnessed by any form of surround, is positioned to one side of the house and spills over a large area.

Contrary to overall site appearances, a closer, on-foot inspection reveals a hive of well-organised human activity at the site. Fourteen or more Chinese men, dressed in the Chinese fashion, displaying shaved heads and ponytails and aged approximately between 18 and 35 years old are working singularly or in groups on tasks associated with the fish-curing operation. Two small sail boats, with two Chinese men in each, can be seen anchored across the bay; both are hauling seine nets. Broad-shouldered European fishermen – standing in their boats – are queued four deep at the jetty, waiting to unload their catch of fish, have it weighed and receive payment. Supplying the seemingly unquenchable Chinese market with fish is a process they have all become familiar with and for the most part, are thankful of.

Four Chinese men unload baskets of fish from the first boat and hurry them across to the weighing scales. Here the boss or headman of the curing operation stands. Occasionally he uses the singsong language particular to the Chinese to give instructions to his working team. Mostly though, he is paying attention to tallying the fish weights and counting out the correct payment to the European fishermen. Relations between the two nationalities seem casual, even friendly. From the weighing scales, the baskets of fish are taken to another group of four Chinese men who crouch at the water’s edge scaling fish, splitting them down the backbone, removing the intestines and folding them open to resemble a butterfly shape. Their work is done in a fast, practiced movement. After a final wash the fish are packed into nearby brine filled casks. In this cleaned, split and brined state, the fish remain for four to six days at least.

A short distance away, two more site workers remove already brined fish from their casks and carefully spread them to dry in the sun on the long tables. Beside the rows of drying fish, another Chinese man works at the task of turning each fish so that both sides may receive equal sun, a chore that must be done countless times before the curing process is complete. At the far end of the racks another man nimbly carries out the final process, which is to remove the fully dried fish from the racks, pack them into hessian bags, sew the top and stack them out of the weather to await transport to Melbourne. From Melbourne they will be distributed to Chinese communities throughout Victoria and overseas.

Mid morning arrives and a Chinese man opens a window of the house to yell one unintelligible word at the site workers. All work activity stops and the Chinese men file into the house for a meal break. The house interior contains three areas. Furthest from the door is an arrangement of bunk beds; the central region has a large table and seating; and at the front of the house, to one side and close to the front door, is positioned a sizeable clay hearth and cooking arrangement. A stewing pot and kettle hang over the hearth, with several other pots and deeply curved metal cooking dishes placed nearby. Next to the cooking zone is a meals preparation area. Among other odd equipment (unknown to the European kitchen) is a large cleaver, several brown ceramic jars and a range of preserved and raw foods; all are neatly hanging or positioned on benches in an orderly fashion.

At the main table, a steaming hot, heavily spiced broth of beef bones and green leafy vegetables is served to each man. The headman (speaking in tolerable, but broken English) relates that the curing establishment is owned by a Melbourne-based Chinese merchant. Every two weeks the merchant sends a ship from Melbourne to pick up cured fish and drop off supplies for the operation. The headman himself is paid a wage, but the working crew is made up of men who have had their passage from China paid by the merchant. Each man must now work as directed by the merchant until the cost of his fare, with interest, has been returned – this is the credit–ticket system. The working men are lean and appear eager and in good health. Totally accepting of their situation and the Chinese system of indebted labour, the men talk rapidly, laugh and smile broadly as they eat with wide ceramic spoons from delicate Chinese-style bowls and await, if they are lucky, their chance to strike it rich on the Australian goldfields. 156