About

This blog is written by Kate Bagnall (@baibi on Twitter). I’ve been interested in Australia’s historical connections to China since I first lived there more than ten years ago – when, by coincidence, I found myself living in the overseas Chinese homelands of the Pearl River Delta.

A PhD in Chinese Australian history, a stint at the beautiful Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, and an ongoing attempt to grasp not one but three Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese and See Yup/Taishanhua) has followed.

Here’s what’s currently keeping me busy:

  • hacking a research project called  ‘Invisible Australians: Living under the White Australia Policy’ with Tim Sherratt
  • putting together an Omeka-based website about the travels of Anglo-Chinese Australians, as part of the Invisible Australians project
  • researching for a book on the 1908 High Court case Potter v. Minahan, which includes finding out about the history of the Chinese at Indigo, Victoria and the connections between Shiquli village, Xinhui and Victoria
  • writing an essay that revisits the Poon Gooey case, 100 years after the case and 50 years after AT Yarwood published his paper about it
  • co-convening the 2011 Dragon Tails conference to be held at the Chinese Museum, Melbourne
  • revising a short biographical essay I wrote for my daughter about her paternal great-grandmother

Publications – Peer-reviewed

‘A journey of love: Agnes Breuer’s sojourn in 1930s China’, in Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woolacott (eds), Transnational Ties, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2008. Go to online version.

‘Vermin, hot showers and a shortage of trousers: Official visits to wartime internment camps’, in Ilma O’Brien and Mat Trinca (eds), Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia during the Second World War, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2008.

‘“He would be a Chinese still”: Negotiating boundaries of race, culture and identity in late nineteenth-century Australia’, in Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor (eds), After the Rush: Regulation, Participation, and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860–1940 – Otherland Literary Journal, no. 9, 2004, pp. 153–70.

‘“I am nearly heartbroken about him”: Stories of Australian mothers’ separation from their ‘Chinese’ children’, History Australia, vol. 1, no. 1, December 2003, pp.30–40.

‘Across the threshold: White women and Chinese men in the White colonial imaginary’, Hecate, vol. 28, no. 2, 2002, pp. 9–29.

Other publications

‘Aussie lad or Chinese scholar?’, Memento, issue 38, 2010, pp. 16–18. Also published online (pdf, 4mb).

A legacy of White Australia: Records about Chinese Australians in the National Archives, paper presented at the Fourth International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou China, National Archives of Australia website, June 2009.

Review of Manying Ip, Being Maori–Chinese: Mixed Identities, Auckland University Press, for Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, 2008.

‘Finding Chinese family connections in the National Archives’, Australian Family Tree Connections, August 2005, pp. 25–29. Also published online.

‘“Repatriated to China June 1914”: How fifty-eight elderly Chinese men found their way home from Darwin’, Journal of Chinese Australia, issue 1, May 2005, www.purl.org/jca.

‘The Stretton Chinese banner’, Journal of Chinese Australia, issue 1, May 2005, www.purl.org/jca.

‘Digging deep: Sources for Chinese-Australian history in NSW’, Locality, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 4–12.

‘Two languages, two cultures, two homes’, Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation website, www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au.

I have also worked on these websites and publications in various capacities as researcher/writer/editor:

  • Uncommon Lives (uncommonlives.naa.gov.au) – in particular Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda, Charles and Ruth Lane Poole and Muslim Journeys
  • Documenting a Democracy (foundingdocs.gov.au)
  • Australia’s Prime Ministers (primeministers.naa.gov.au)
  • National Archives of Australia (naa.gov.au)
  • An Ideal City? (idealcity.org.au)
  • Family Journeys: Stories in the National Archives of Australia, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 2008 and the online version
  • Memory of a Nation (exhibition catalogue), National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 2007
  • Keep It For the Future! How to Set Up Small Community Archives, National Archives of Australia, 2007
  • Memento, magazine published by the National Archives of Australia

Selected conference papers and talks

‘ “Charity covereth a multitude of sins”: Destitute, neglected and deserted Anglo-Chinese children in Australia’, paper presented at the Australasian Social Welfare History Workshop, University of New South Wales, 18–19 February 2010.

‘A legacy of White Australia: Records about Chinese Australians in the National Archives of Australia’, paper presented at the Fourth International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, 10 May 2009.

‘Finding a family connection to China’, talk presented at Stepping Ashore: How to Research Your Chinese Family History workshop, Chinese Australian Historical Society Inc., Sydney, 13 September 2008.

‘Exploring Chinese-Australian ancestral homes’, talk presented to the Chinese Women’s Association, Sydney, 14 June 2008.

‘ “I always wanted to return to Australia”: Transnational lives and national imperatives in the case of Potter v. Minahan (1908)’, paper presented at Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities: A conference about migration, connection, heritage and cultural memory, Flinders University, Adelaide, 3–5 December 2007.

‘Introduction to Chinese records in the National Archives’, talk presented to the Chinese Australian Historical Society Inc., National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 29 September 2007.

‘Home villages in China’, talk given at the Chinese Australian Historical Society’s Members’ Forum, Sydney, 21 July 2007.

‘In the repository, under the bed: Managing Chinese Australian documentary heritage’, paper presented at Tacking the Dragon: Chinese Australian Cultural Heritage National Workshop, Brisbane, 16–18 October 2006.

‘Journeys of love: Australian wives in China, 1885–1935’, paper presented at the Transnational Lives: Biography Across Boundaries conference, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 27-28 July 2006.

‘Uncommon Lives in the National Archives: Biography, history and the records of government’, paper presented at the Australian Historical Association Conference, Australian National University, July 2006.

‘Experiences of Anglo-Chinese families in China’, paper presented at the Postgraduate Research in Australian History seminar, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, 16 September 2005.

‘Going north to China as their wives: The experiences of Western wives in south China’, paper presented at the International Conference on Quong Tart and his Times, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 1-4 July 2004.

‘“I am nearly heartbroken about him”: Stories of Australian mothers’ separation from their “Chinese” children’, paper presented at the Australian Historical Association conference, Mildura, September 2003.

‘A trip through Taishan’, paper presented at the NSW History Week seminar on Clan Organisations in the Sydney Chinese Communities, Chinese Australian Historical Society, Sydney, 21 September 2003.

‘Ah Haih: One woman’s life in a Chinese village’, paper presented at the International Workshop on Researching the Homelands of Trans-Pacific Chinese, Chinese Australian Historical Society, Sydney, 13 July 2002.

‘Across the threshold: White women and Chinese hawkers in the white colonial imaginary’, paper presented at the Australia Historical Association Conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, 3-6 July 2002.

‘Comings and goings: Some cases from the files of the National Archives of Australia (Sydney)’, talk given to the Chinese Australian Family and Community History Group, National Archives of Australia, Sydney, 1 June 2001.

‘Chinese-Australian children in nineteenth-century New South Wales’, paper presented at the Australian Historical Association Conference, Adelaide University, 5-9 July 2000.

‘He would be a Chinese still: Negotiating boundaries of race, culture and identity in late nineteenth-century Australia’, paper presented at the Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation Conference, Chinese Museum, Melbourne, 1-2 July 2000.

‘Sex, protection or partnership? Chinese-European marriages in nineteenth-century New South Wales’, paper presented at the Workshop on the Chinese in Australian and New Zealand History, University of New South Wales, 11-13 February 2000.

‘The early history of the Chinese in Australia’, talk given at Zhuhai Radio and Television University, Zhuhai China, 20 November 1999.

Academic awards and financial support received

Early Career Summer Fellow, Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia, January–April 2009

Australian Postgraduate Award with Stipend, University of Sydney, 1998—2002

Full scholarship for six months of study at a Chinese university, Chinese Scholarship Centre, 2000

Joan Allsop Grant-in-Aid, Department of History, University of Sydney, 2003

Postgraduate Research Support Scheme, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, 2002

Joan Allsop Grant-in-Aid, Department of History, University of Sydney, 2000

John Frazer Travelling Scholarship, University of Sydney, 1999

Other activities and memberships

Organising committee member for Dragon Tails: Re-Interpreting Chinese-Australian Heritage conference, Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, 9–11 October 2009

Historical research consultancy for forthcoming biography of LJ Hooker

Radio interviews with ABC 666 Canberra and SBS Radio World View

Co-editor of the online Journal of Chinese Australia (www.purl.org/jca)

Founding member of the Chinese Australian Historical Society Inc.

Reviewed manuscripts for Journal of Australian Colonial History and History Australia

Co-convenor of the Workshop on the Chinese in Australian and New Zealand History, University of New South Wales, 11–13 February 2000