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 that Bathurst storekeeper Loong Hung Pun (Kong Loong) was “a Yee Hing leader of note who oversaw the local operation of the credit-ticket system on the western gold fields of New South Wales.”[3] English language newspaper reports of Chinese on the Western Goldfields of New South Wales mention the existence of temples, but do not make specific reference to Chinese Masons. In 1861, the Sydney Morning Herald’s goldfields correspondent described a joss house in Sofala as “a large tent, gaudily decorated inside and out, with tapers lighted on a table inside at noonday, and an unmistakeable Chinese flag flying over the doors. Unfortunately, he did not report the appearance of the flag.[4] In 1865, Tambaroora was said to be the site of “their most famous joss-houses”.[5]
The Holtermann Collection contains a circa 1872 photograph titled “Bark huts in Chinatown Tambaroora”. Hill End Historian Brian Hodge identified the building as a Chinese temple. The couplets flanking the temples doors have been translated in English as, “His spirit shines in northern palace, His blessing shelters all the Southern Sea”[6] According to translator Ely Finch, the inscriptions identify the temple as nominally a Daoist temple dedicated to multiple deities, with the central hall dedicated to Pak Tai, one of the most popular deities in the Pearl River Delta.[7] Pak Tai is the god of the northern sky/heaven, and is sometimes associated with the North Star, and at other times with the Big Dipper.[8]
On the Northern goldfields of NSW, there was a joss house at the Rocky River near Uralla in 1863. A new temple opened at the Rocky River in 1866. By 1870, Chinese miners were turning from gold to tin, with Chinese going to work on tribute on the tin fields of Northeast Tasmania and on tin fields at Tingha, Oban and Emmaville in northwest New South Wales. Research by Our Chinese Past committee member Malcolm Oakes showed that storekeeper 鄭尚 Chin Ah Song, moved from the Rocky River goldfield to Tingha in 1874, operating a store in Tingha for the next 29 years. It appears that those who moved from the Rocky River brought temple artefacts with them to Tingha. As will be discussed in the next post, Tingha and Northern NSW became a centre for Yee Hing activity.
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[1] See Juanita Kwok, The Chinese in Bathurst: Recovering Forgotten Histories. Doctor of Philosophy PhD thesis, Charles Sturt University, 2019.
[2] ‘Freemasonry Among the Chinese’, Bendigo Advertiser, 1 November 1867.
[3] John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, UNSW Press:2007, 75.
[4] ‘Lecture on the Chinese Question’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December 1861, 2.
[5] Random notes by Wandering Reporter’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1865.
[6] Kwok, The Chinese in Bathurst PhD thesis, 64-67.
[7] Ely Finch, Personal communication 10 September 2017.
[8] Bark Huts in Chinatown, Tambaroora, American and Australasian Photographic Company, 1870-75, Holtermann Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.