Dunolly life
About
This project began upon discovering the personal recollections of my English-born great-great-grandfather, Job Harrop (1848–1917).[4]
I was astonished by Job’s connections to the Chinese on the goldfields of colonial Victoria, and particularly in Dunolly, both as a young boy and an adult. Job had significant interactions with the “sojourners, [those] having not the slightest intention of settling down”[5] – temporary migrants predominantly from Canton, who toiled in alluvial mining on the Victorian goldfields. He also had connections to Chinese settlers who chose to remain in Australia, like William Wong Ying, who became one of 2,969 Chinese who were “naturalised” as British subjects in the colony of Victoria by 1903.[6] By virtue of their strong roots in the town, Job Harrop and Wong Ying lived or worked in Dunolly at the same time for over fifty-three years.
Fig. 2. Amy Mullins, Map of Victoria with central goldfields towns, 2021.
[4] Job Harrop and John Charles Harrop, “Little Job The Digger," 9–25.
[5] Cheok Hong Cheong, “Letter to the Hon. James Munro, Premier of Victoria,” (June 21, 1891), quoted in Ian H. Welch, “Alien Son: The Life and Times of Cheok Hong Cheong, (Zhang Zhuoxiong) 1851-1928” (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2003), 6, http://hdl.handle.net/1885/49261.
[6] Kate Bagnall, “Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation” (Presentation, Australian Historical Association conference, Australian National University, Canberra, July 6, 2018), http://chineseaustralia.org/legacies-of-colonial-naturalisation/.