Discover hidden Chinese Australian history

HISTORIAN and senior lecturer Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson will be at Sovereign Hill uncovering the history of the Ballarat Chinese community through court cases on the goldfields.

The Weston Bate Memorial Lecture will be on Thursday 17 October from 5.30pm at the Sovereign Hill Space and Time Theatre.

Maps, witness lists and deposition testimonies will be used by Dr Loy-Wilson to reveal the old Ballarat and its cross-cultural connections.

“Court cases are like time capsules and in the Australian archive there is so many of them, they just aren’t very searchable,” she said.

“I go round the country, and I find court cases to do with Chinese Australians and when I open them, I get this treasure trove of material.

“I get receipts, bits of clothing, love letters, maps, often in Chinese language and its so fascinating because when you translate it you get this Chinese perspective on Australia.”

Dr Loy-Wilson is a senior lecturer of Australian History at the University of Sydney, specialising in the history of the Chinese Australian community.

She has several published books and currently is working on one based on Chinese Australians in the Australian legal record.

“I grew up overseas, so my dad was a diplomat for the Australian government, and I lived in Russia and China,” said Dr Loy-Wilson.

“The goldrush to me exemplified this time where Australia and China were really connected, and Chinese people and Australian people were in the trenches together digging for gold.

“No place in the country has a more colourful, complicated and frankly quite inspiring history of China Australia relations than Ballarat.”

Despite prevalent racism during this time, Dr Loy-Wilson said it is important to also tell the stories of local people from different cultures who came together.

“As an Australian historian, when I go overseas people constantly talk to me about the White Australia Policy and Australia’s really quite troubling history of race relations, and I acknowledge that and I speak to that in my work all the time,” she said.

“But I have another story to tell beyond that, and that’s the story of how local communities often found ways around cultural differences to live together.

“They’re learning from each other in really interesting everyday ways.”

To book a ticket to the Weston Bate Memorial Lecture visit the Sovereign Hill website.