Dunolly life
The wong Yings
William Wong Ying
(Ah Ying) 黃鴻彥
Elizabeth Wong Ying
(Ah Young)
William Henry
Wong Ying
Ivy Florence
Wong Ying
Fig. 12. Portrait of William Wong Ying (detail), n.d., Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 13. Charlie Farr, Portrait of Elizabeth Ying (detail),
ca. 1880–1890, Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 14. Charlie Farr, Portrait of William Henry Wong Ying (detail), ca. 1890–1898, State Library of Victoria.
Fig. 15. Portrait of Ivy Florence Wong Ying (detail), 1902, Golden Dragon Museum.
William Wong Ying (1844–1919), also known as Wong Ying or Ah Ying, was just eighteen years old when he journeyed to Australia alone by ship on June 1, 1862 from his native town of Jangsing 增城 (now Zengcheng) in Guangdong Province, China.[44] Wong Ying was one of over 42,000 male Chinese migrants who arrived in the colony of Victoria in those early days of alluvial gold abundance.[45] In search of gold and fortune, most “sojourners” sent their earnings back home and eventually returned to their families in China, hopefully in a significantly better financial position.[46] What distinguished Wong Ying from many of his countrymen, was that he chose to settle in Australia permanently, living in Dunolly right up until his death in 1919. Not only was Wong Ying a storekeeper; working in and later taking over his uncle’s highly valued store Sun Kum Goon at the “Chinese camp” (figs. 16–18),[47] but he also “invested in mining and employed parties of Chinese miners along the Burnt Creek [goldfields]” of Dunolly (figs. 19–20).[48]
Fig. 16. Golden Dragon Museum, Sun Kum Goon 新金源 store seal, Dunolly, ca. 1860, 2017, personal collection of Edna Brownbill.
Sun Kum Goon translates literally to ‘New Gold Source.’
Fig. 19. G. H. Jenkinson, Two Chinese stores opposite one another at Burnt Creek, Dunolly, ca. 1861, State Library of Victoria.
![G. H. Jenkinson, Detail of Chinese store with sign translating to New Gold [indiscernible]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b9f558_41585c1b235b44d0a435478046dfc0f9~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_512,h_509,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/G_%20H_%20Jenkinson%2C%20Detail%20of%20Chinese%20store%20with%20sign%20translating%20to%20New%20Gold%20%5Bindiscernible%5D.png)
Fig. 20. G. H. Jenkinson, Detail of Chinese store with sign translating to 'New Gold [indiscernible]' at Burnt Creek, Dunolly, ca. 1861, State Library of Victoria.
Fig. 17. Golden Dragon Museum, Personal stamp of Wong Ying, Dunolly, ca. 1860–1870, 2017, personal collection of Edna Brownbill.
This translates as ‘Huang Hong Yan,’ which is likely to be Wong Ying’s Cantonese name.
Fig. 18. Amy Mullins, Wong Ying's Chinese abacus or suan pan held at the Golden Dragon Museum, ca. 1860, 2021.
Wong Ying used this to quickly and accurately calculate sums at the store.
It is indicative of Wong Ying’s business and mining successes that after thirteen years spent living in the colony of Victoria he, unlike many others, was able to fund his own travel back to China.[49] In December 1875, Wong Ying brought back with him 1000 sovereigns, one box of gold (two ounces), and five ounces of gold rings.[50] Apart from visiting his family, Wong Ying is said to have married while in China.[51] Unfortunately, little is known about the union.[52] However, given the widely held cultural and family expectations of the time, it is likely he would have fathered one or more children in order to ensure his family lineage continued.[53] This would have also ensured that in his absence, his parents, grandparents, and extended family would be cared for in their old age.
Upon his return to Dunolly in 1878, Wong Ying’s personal and financial commitment to the town deepened.[54] By 1880, he took over the licence of the recently built Terminus Hotel, which was situated on the outskirts of town – conveniently located at the terminus of the new Dunolly Railway Station and across the road from the “Chinese camp” and Sun Kum Goon (fig. 21).[55] Similarly inspired by the railway line, “Mr [Job] Harrop opened a ‘Railway Boot Shop’” nearby, thus revealing one of many possible links between the two men in adulthood.[56] In 1882, Wong Ying made the significant decision to become a “naturalised” British subject of the colony of Victoria,[57] granting him the same legal rights and privileges as a British-born subject within the colony of Victoria only.[58] Fortunately, Wong Ying applied before Victoria changed their naturalisation policy in 1885 to exclude Chinese people “unless a sufficient reason was assigned,” before the colony finally ceased all naturalisations of Chinese people in 1888.[59] Formal racial discrimination was extensively directed at the Chinese through many legal and policy mechanisms, including restricting how many Chinese could arrive into the ports of Victoria on any one ship, charging exorbitant fees, and mandating certain licences be paid by Chinese miners only.[60]
Fig. 21. John Tully, Map of Dunolly's "Chinese Camp,"
ca. 1880–1900, 2018.
Fig. 22. W. J. Sandow, Dunolly Railway Station, Dunolly, Victoria, n.d., Golden Dragon Museum.
While there were many formal and informal ways in which Europeans sought to exclude Chinese people and diminish their social status, Wong Ying’s “prominent position” in the gold mining town of Dunolly was widely recognised and is evident in the historical record.[61] Gold mining and extraction was “an industry in which he was one of the leaders” and was reported to have been a pioneer of the cyanide leaching method for extracting gold from ore.[62] His innovations influenced practices in the European mining sector, which was heavily invested in quartz mining.[63]
In 1883, Wong Ying started a family in Dunolly, marrying Elizabeth Young (1864–1950), a half-Chinese and half-European woman twenty years his junior.[64] After an extended honeymoon, Wong Ying and Elizabeth Ying made the Terminus Hotel their home and created a pub that would become a meeting place for locals across all cultures. However, newspaper articles reveal that life as a Chinese publican in the 1880s was not easy. On Good Friday in 1884, Wong Ying was assaulted by William Ashton, a man who had wandered over to the Terminus from a drunken “orgie” near the “Chinese camp” having just stolen £110 from a farmer.[65] Wong Ying refused Ashton service on the grounds that he was “already intoxicated” prompting him to assault Wong Ying and resist police arrest.[66] Perhaps indicative of racial discrimination of the time, it was the assault against Wong Ying that attracted the least legal consequences; a fine of just ten shillings or three days’ imprisonment, with resisting police arrest attracting a fine of twenty shillings or seven days’ imprisonment.[67]
Shortly after their marriage, Elizabeth and Wong Ying’s two children were born, William Henry (Lye) in 1884 and Ivy Florence (Que) in 1887 and spent their childhood together at the Terminus Hotel (fig. 24).[68] He was remembered as “an indulgent husband and father.”[69] Photographs from the 1880s and 1890s indicate that, with few exceptions, the family generally wore typically “Western” clothing that reflected their middle-class status, and also suggests a degree of cultural integration (fig. 25).
Fig. 23. Chinese man outside the Terminus Hotel, Dunolly, ca. 1880–1897, Dunolly Museum.
Fig. 24. Wong Ying with son William and daughter Ivy at the Terminus Hotel, Dunolly, ca. 1890, Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 25. Portrait of the Wong Ying family, ca. 1895, Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 26. Ivy Ying at home, ca. 1900–1902, Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 27. Charlie Farr, Portrait of young sporting enthusiast William Henry Wong Ying – a talented footballer, and keen
but poor batsman,
ca. 1890–1898, State Library of Victoria.
Significantly, however, Wong Ying was proud of his Chinese heritage and expressed this through the hotel, ensuring it became a cross-cultural meeting place. As a local newspaper remembered, “Mr. Ying’s generous hospitality was well-known, and at Chinese New Year…and other celebrations Mr. Ying used to have practically open house for a time, and ladies and gentlemen from the town were delighted to attend the festivities.”[70] Ivy recalled that her father had a Joss House (spiritual shrine) just inside the entrance of the hotel to ward off evil spirits.[71] While a common feature within Chinese homes and businesses, for Wong Ying to display the shrine so prominently and to a largely European clientele, demonstrates his confidence in projecting and sharing his cultural heritage. Like many Chinese shrines, it featured a depiction of popular Chinese warrior Guan Yu 關羽,similar to one on display at the Golden Dragon Museum
(figs. 28–29). Guan Yu was “deified for his fierce loyalty to his sworn brother Liu Bei, a trait even his enemies valued and honoured.”[72]
Wong Ying’s loyalty and generosity extended to friends and family,[73] and often to absolute strangers.[74] His benevolence was especially pronounced in the 1890s – a time of deep economic depression.[75] In his lengthy obituary, the local newspaper emphasised that, “No one who appealed in distress for help were refused, and in times when men looking for work were numerous, men perhaps hungry and in want, Mr. and Mrs. Ying’s kindness was proverbial. …They liberally supported worthy movements in the town, charitable and social.”[76]
A remarkable feature of the Terminus Hotel’s legacy is that the licence was passed down through the female line of the family. Elizabeth was considered a trailblazer and “veteran” of the hotel industry.[77] In 1938, upon the Terminus’ licence being transferred to her daughter Ivy Scarff (née Ying) (1887–1964), Elizabeth was praised by a trade publication as having an “unblemished record” and being “one of three or four women licensees in Victoria whose career extends beyond half a century.”[78] The hotel’s popularity continued under the dedicated management of Ivy and later, Ivy’s daughter Edna Brownbill (née Scarff) (1923–2019), until its closure in 1956 when locals “drank the pub dry.”[79] In the late 1980s, the new residential owners of the hotel remarked that “most of the elderly population have drunk here. Some even recall who sat where.”[80] Locals were so concerned for the Ying family’s legacy that when “it was necessary for painters to cover up the [Ying’s] name during painting… “Within minutes several locals had stopped by crying: ‘You’re not going to paint it out are you?’”[81]
Fig. 28. Amy Mullins, Joss House shrine featuring Chinese warrior Guan Yu at the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo, 2021.
%20at%20the%20Golden%20Dr.jpg)
Fig. 29. Amy Mullins, Joss House shrine featuring Chinese warrior Guan Yu at the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo (detail), 2021.
Fig. 30. Matt "mattinbgn," Terminus Hotel, Dunolly, 2010 (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Fig. 31. Portrait of Terminus Hotel licensee Elizabeth Ying, ca. 1910, Golden Dragon Museum.
The Wong Ying family’s significance to Dunolly and the Maryborough area more broadly is great and extends well beyond the stories and events included here. What these stories do show is that the many Chinese who remained in Victoria after the gold rush excitement ended were embedded and valued members of the community who proudly retained their cultural identity. While pervasive racism existed – perpetrated by Europeans at both an individual and state level – there are also numerous untold stories of open curiosity, acceptance, friendship, admiration, and gratitude for the Chinese and their integral presence in country towns like Dunolly.
Fig. 32. Edna Beryl Brownbill, granddaughter of Wong Ying, at her 70th birthday party (detail), 1993, Golden Dragon Museum.
Fig. 33. "Shane," William Wong Ying and Elizabeth Ying's gravestones, Dunolly Cemetery, Dunolly, Victoria, 2021.
Citations
[44] Collector of Customs, Melbourne [Victoria], Application for Certificate Exempting from Dictation Test (CEDT), Statutory Declaration, 1916, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[45] Cai Shaoqing, “On the Overseas Secret Societies of Australia,” trans. Duncan Campbell, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 4, no. 1 (June 2002): 37, https://www.nzasia.org.nz/uploads/1/3/2/1/132180707/caisahoqing.pdf.
[46] Kathryn Cronin, Colonial Casualties: Chinese in Early Victoria (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1982), 124.
[47] Wong Ying’s uncle owned two stores. His Gooseberry Hill store was “the wealthiest Chinese business in Dunolly,” valued at £35. Sun Kum Goon was rated at a similarly high value of £30 in 1874, and between 1878 and 1880. Shire of Dunolly, Rate Books, cited in Valerie Lovejoy, “Chinese in Late Nineteenth-Century Bendigo: Their local and translocal lives in ‘this strangers' country,’” Australian Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 49. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2010.539239.
[48] Edna Brownbill, Papers of Wong Ying, cited in Chris McConville and Associates, Shire of Bet Bet Conservation Study: Volume One, 98.
[49] Kathryn Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 126.
[50] Export Receipt – Ship “Somerset” from Victoria, December 24, 1875, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[51] Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo. Note: Edna Brownbill was the granddaughter of William Wong Ying and Elizabeth Ying, and daughter of Ivy Florence Ying.
[52] Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[53] Paul Macgregor, “Dreams of Jade and Gold: Chinese families in Australia’s history,” in The Australian Family: Images and Essays, ed. Anna Epstein (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1998), excerpt accessed at https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/immigrants-and-emigrants/chinese-australian-families/dreams-of-jade-and-gold/.
[54] Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[55] James Flett, Dunolly: Story of an Old Gold Diggings Town (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1974), 210.
[56] James Flett, Dunolly, 210.
[57] Chief Secretary’s Office, Victoria, Memorial for Letters of Naturalisation – Ah Ying, March 14, 1882, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[58] Chief Secretary’s Office, Victoria, Certificate of Naturalisation No. 1618 – Ah Ying, May 15, 1882, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[59] State Library of Victoria, “Researching Your Victorian Ancestors: Immigration and Naturalisation,” State Library of Victoria Website, accessed September 8, 2021, https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/victorianancestors/immigration.
[60] See Anna Kyi for a comprehensive examination of the discriminatory legislation and policies enacted against the Chinese in a pre-federation informal “White Australia” context. Anna Kyi, ‘“The most determined, sustained diggers’ resistance campaign”: Chinese protests against the Victorian Government’s anti-Chinese legislation 1855-1862,’” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 8 (2009): 16–28, https://prov.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/media/provenance2009_kyi.pdf.
[61] “Death of Mr Wong Ying,” Dunolly and Betbetshire Express, January 21, 1919, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[62] “Death of Mr Wong Ying,” Dunolly and Betbetshire Express, January 21, 1919, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[63] Mines Department, Reports of the Mining Surveyors and Registrars: Quarter ending 30th September, 1879 – Dunolly and Tarnagulla Divisions, W. G. Couchman (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1879), 32–33, https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/govpub/VPARL1879-80No83.pdf.
[64] Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes – Marriage Registration Reference 5042, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[65] “Strange Affair at Dunolly,” Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, April 18, 1884, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/254370929.
[66] “Strange Affair at Dunolly,” Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, April 18, 1884.
[67] “Dunolly,” Bendigo Advertiser, April 15, 1884, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/88998216.
[68] Wong Ying Family Tree, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[69] “Death of Mr Wong Ying,” Dunolly and Betbetshire Express, January 21, 1919, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[70] “Death of Mr Wong Ying,” Dunolly and Betbetshire Express, January 21, 1919, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[71] Edna Brownbill and Leigh McKinnon, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo. Note: Leigh McKinnon is the Research Officer at the Golden Dragon Museum.
[72] Dr. Y. Tang, email message to author, October 1, 2021.
[73] John Tully, “Tailings: Extracts from the Newsletter of Goldfields Historical & Arts Society Inc., Ah Chuey,” The Welcome Record 33, no. 1 (17 January 2018): 14, https://www.dunollynews.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TWR-Volume-33-Issue-1-17.1.18-INTERNET.pdf.; Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[74] “Riverina News,” Age, April 5, 1911, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/196194884.
[75] John Tully, “Tailings: Extracts from the Newsletter of Goldfields Historical & Arts Society Inc., Ah Chuey,” 14; Edna Brownbill, Handwritten notes, n.d., Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.; Bruce Scates, “Unemployment,” in The Oxford Companion to Australian History, eds. Graeme Davison, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre (Oxford University Press, 2001; online ed., 2003), https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195515039.001.0001/acref-9780195515039-e-1492.
[76] “Death of Mr Wong Ying,” Dunolly and Betbetshire Express, January 21, 1919, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[77] “Trade Veteran,” Newspaper article, unknown source, 1938, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[78] “Trade Veteran,” Newspaper article, unknown source, 1938, Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo; “Licence Transfers,” Argus, June 22, 1938, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11165292.
[79] “Walk back in time at The Terminus,” Advertiser, August 9, 1989, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[80] “Walk back in time at The Terminus,” Advertiser, August 9, 1989, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.
[81] “Walk back in time at The Terminus,” Advertiser, August 9, 1989, accessed in Family File 28: William Wong Ying, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.