Migrants ‘on the wing’ at Visible Immigrants Seven
Yesterday I spoke at Visible Immigrants Seven, a small conference organised by Flinders University and the Migration Museum in Adelaide. The conference aimed to explore the idea of migrant mobility before and after the major act of migration. Most of…
Paper Trails: Travels with Anglo-Chinese Australians, 1900–1939
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve been awarded the National Archives of Australia’s Ian Maclean Award for 2012. My project is called Paper Trails: Travels with Anglo-Chinese Australians, 1900–1939. I’m looking to start the project towards the end of…
Happy Valley: Patrick White’s impressions of an Anglo-Chinese family
Today’s Canberra Times features an article by David Marr about Australian novelist Patrick White’s forgotten first book, Happy Valley, ‘the thylacine of Australian literature’. It was written while White was working as a jackaroo at Bolaro (or Bolero) in southern…
‘Paper trails’: my presentation at the 5th WCILCOS conference
I’m still digesting all that I heard at the 5th WCILCOS conference and cogitating about the exciting possibilities for international collaborative work that have emerged from it. I’m hoping to pull together some more thoughts about my discussions with folk…
Something Australian at WCILCOS 2012 (Vancouver, Canada)
In a bit over a week, I’ll be heading (a long way) north to the 5th WCILCOS International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies in Vancouver, Canada. The conference theme is ‘Chinese through the Americas’, but there…
William Chie, fruitgrower, of Carlingford
This guest post by Carlene Bagnall tells the story of William Chie, an Anglo-Chinese fruitgrower and poultry farmer from the Carlingford–Epping area in Sydney. Carlene came upon William Chie’s story while researching the history of the Epping Seventh-day Adventist Church….
LJ Hooker’s Chinese roots
His name is known across the country, but until recently the true story of LJ Hooker’s early life was unknown, even to his own family. Now, after five years of research, writing and production, Natalia Hooker has published a lavish…
Another Fullerton marriage
Further to my recent post about the Rev. Dr James Fullerton’s habit of marrying young white women to Chinese husbands – I’ve found another, somewhat earlier, example. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of 30 August 1862 reproduces an article…
An indecipherable name and Rev. Dr Fullerton’s marriage shop
Some recent research I’ve been doing into an Anglo-Chinese family living in Sydney in the 1870s–1880s led me to both an interesting problem and an interesting discovery. I undertook this research for someone else, so I won’t mention any names…
‘Race, service, citizenship’: talk by Alistair Kennedy
The next event from the Chinese Australian Historical Society is a talk from Alistair Kennedy, BA (Hons) MA Dip Ch (HK), MBE from the School of History, ANU. Race, Service, Citizenship: White Australia’s attitudes to Chinese-Australians between the two World…