By Juanita Kwok 18 November 2025 After landing taxes were introduced in Victoria in 1855 and South Australia in 1856 to deter Chinese arrivals, gold seekers from the Pearl River Delta area began landing in Sydney and making their way to the New South Wales goldfields. There were already small numbers of Amoy men on the goldfields.[1] In 1867, clear reference was made to the existence of Chinese Freemasons in Braidwood on the Southern Goldfields of New South Wales. The Braidwood Dispatch reported “members of the craft muster in great force in the Braidwood district” and that there were no less than 400 Chinese members present at an initiation held at Jembaicumbene, where English gentlemen along with fifty Chinese men, were initiated into the Lodge. The report differentiated the Chinese Lodge from European Freemasonry, which it said, was also well-established on the goldfields.[2] The Yee Hing were also active on the Western Goldfields of New South Wales. John Fitzgerald argued...Read More

By Juanita Kwok, 13 November 2025 This Chinese Masonic Badge belonged to Charles Yow Senior (b. China 1862, d. Bathurst 1927). Charles Yow Sr was a member of the Chinese Masonic Lodge in Bathurst. The front of the medal has the Chinese character for “award”. The character on the back means “company” or “society” and is the same term for society used in the name of the Yee Hing Society [an earlier name for the Chinese Masonic Society].[1] Chinese Masonic Badge that belonged to Charles Yow Senior. Photos by Juanita Kwok Charles Yow Senior Charles Yow Senior came out from China when he was 14 and married Carcoar-born Mary Mook San in 1907.[2] Their first child Charles was Charles Yow Junior (Chinese name Loong Ah Yow, b. 1908 Wallerawang, d. 1985 Bathurst). The Yows had a market garden at White Rock before moving to Brewongle and then Morrisset Street, Bathurst. Charles Yow Senior died in Bathurst in 1927 and is...Read More

By Juanita Kwok, November 2025 In 1854, ships from Hong Kong bearing Chinese men from the Pearl River Delta area of southern China began landing at Port Phillip, from where the gold seekers made their way to the Victorian goldfields. Although the goldrushes had begun in NSW in May 1851, it was to the richer Victorian fields that the Cantonese gold seekers initially flocked. As Chinese established settlements on goldfields, they erected temples, club-houses, clan-halls and masonic halls, often referred to under the common rubric of “joss houses”. Paul Macgregor’s research on Chinese joss houses counted over fifty in Victoria alone.[1] An 1856 report on the Chinese in Bendigo quite clearly differentiated between a Masonic Hall and joss houses: “The faction known as the four districts, to whom belongs the joss-house in Long Gully, have also established a species of free-masonry among themselves and erected a Masonic Hall at the 1st White Hill encampment.”[2]  In 1859, Anglo-Chinese linguist James McCulloch...Read More

By Juanita Kwok 20 October 2025 Part of frieze – Carved scene with three sheep – at McCrossin’s Mill. Photo by Juanita Kwok Historians generally date the arrival of the Yee Hing in Australia to the gold rushes which began in Australia in 1851. There is some evidence, however, that an earlier, affiliated society, the Sheathed Sword Society may have been brought to NSW by Chinese indentured labourers prior to the gold rushes. The earliest Chinese people to come to Australia in large numbers were contract labourers who were brought to work in New South Wales from the port of Amoy in Fujian, the province where the secret society known as the Hung League or Yee Hing originated. Amoy was one of the treaty ports opened up for trade by the British after the First Opium War (1839-1842) and the port in which British agents such as Tait & Co. established the labour trade.   Under this trade, men voluntarily...Read More

By Juanita Kwok Chinese Masonic Sign (Albury City Collection ARM 92.009) The Chinese Masonic Society is one of the earliest and largest and longest-continuing of Chinese Australian associations, established in the 1850s and still in operation, with its headquarters in Mary St, Surry Hills, Sydney. John Fitzgerald described its evolution “from a loose affiliation of rural clubs into an organised social network with a prominent urban profile”.[1] A report of the representatives who attended the grand opening of the Chinese Masonic Lodge at 18 Mary Street, Surry Hills on 30 January 1912 illustrates how widespread membership was in rural Australia: The opening ceremonies commenced at 2 o’clock this morning when the Grand Master of the Society, Moy Sing, formally received the delegates from the different affiliate bodies in Melbourne, Brisbane, Bendigo, Rockhampton, Thursday Island, Auckland, Tasmania, Wagga, Wyalong, Temora, Nyngan, Braidwood, Moree, Mungindi, Condobolin, Hay, Parkes, Walgett, Newcastle, Wellington NSW, Albury, Wangaratta, Tumut, Tingha, Narrabri, Goulburn, Gunnedah, Wollongong, Lismore, Armidale.[2]...Read More