Chinese immigrants went to Australia looking for gold and found communities. Why does so little of their legacy remain?
Driven off Queensland’s goldfields, arrivals from China pioneered trade and agriculture in the north of the country, until discriminatory legislation and changing times forced them out
Gold fever hit Australia in 1851. Rushes swept the southern states of Victoria and New South Wales and fanned out across the country; whole towns emptied as people raced to the goldfields, hoping to “strike lucky” and make their fortunes. As news reached the outside world, Australia was overrun by migrant prospectors from Britain, Europe and, especially, China.
At the time, China was in chaos, ravaged by famine and civil war, and many Chinese came to the Antipodes from harsh rural backgrounds. With little to lose, they were willing to work hard for profits they could either send home to relatives or save for their own return. Mostly male, immigrants were divided by a range of dialects and clan loyalties, united by being strangers struggling to survive in a foreign and often unwelcoming land.
In far north Queensland, where Australia’s “finger” points towards New Guinea, so many Chinese came that, at one time, they outnumbered the European population by five to one. Many remained long after the gold had gone, pioneering local trade and agriculture and bringing substantial improvements to living conditions. And yet little trace of this Chinese heritage remains today.
Homesick Filipino migrants count cost of separation for a ‘better’ future
Economic necessity has forced Filipino migrants like Jeffrey Ongoco to spend years away from the people they left home to support
For more than a decade, Jeffrey Ongoco has watched much of his daughter’s childhood unfold through a screen.
He and his wife work in Doha to support their 16-year-old daughter, who has lived in the Philippines since infancy, cared for by relatives in Bataan province, about 130km (80 miles) northwest of Manila.
It was a sacrifice the couple felt they had to make to give her a better life.
“As parents, we don’t want our kids to experience the hardships we had before. So even if it’s very difficult for parents to be away from their children, we will do everything we can for their future,” Ongoco said.
Being away from your family is never easy
Their story reflects the tough trade-off in the lives of many overseas Filipino workers (OFWs): the chance to earn more abroad, but often at the cost of years spent away from the people they left home to support.
