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 or involuntarily signed agreements in China to work abroad, usually for a five year period. On arrival their contracts were transferred over to their employers, who most often sent them to work as shepherds on the pastoral frontiers of New South Wales which stretched from Port Phillip, (the colony of Victoria from 1850), up through the Upper Hunter and northwest of New South Wales into the Wide Bay and Burnett areas (the colony of Queensland from 1859). Margaret Slocomb, historian of Chinese indentured labourers in Queensland asserted that some of the Burnett and Wide Bay Chinese were almost certainly members of the Heaven and Earth Society (tiandihui), known commonly as the Sheathed Sword or Small Sword Society.[1] A report in the Argus newspaper claimed that the “Short or Small Swords Society” was a variant of the Heaven and Earth Societies tiandihui that organised the Red Turban Rebellion in Guangdong province.[2]
The first ship bearing Chinese contract labourers arrived in New South Wales in 1848 and their numbers increased in the early 1850s when the gold rushes created a demand for pastoral labourers. At least 3000 Chinese indentured labourers were brought to the colonies in the early 1850s. Robert Towns, who later gained notoriety for his importation of Kanak labourers, was by his own admission, the chief importer of Chinese to the colonies, bringing out eight shiploads, averaging three hundred persons.[3] Newspaper reports show that a number of labourers who were discontent with their treatment, pay and working conditions absconded from their workplaces, refused to work or rebelled, sometimes attacking their overseers. An examination of Bench Books from courthouses in New South Wales and Queensland enabled Maxine Darnell to identify the names of hundreds of labourers who went before the courts, their places of employment and employers or overseers.[4]
A large employer of indentured Chinese labourers was William Charles Wentworth, who sent his servants to work in Vaucluse and on his properties on the Hunter and Murrumbidgee districts. On 20 August 1852, a group of Wentworth’s Chinese servants were brought before the Police Court on charges of absconding from service, an offence punishable by gaol term under the Masters and Servants Act. Wentworth complained that Isan In Ho and another man named Tan Ong were the “principal ringleaders who had induced the rest to strike off work”.[5] Ho had entered into a five-year contract with Wentworth beginning 18 February 1852, but in August of that year, he had refused to do any work unless he was paid a month’s wages. Ho was described as “not only tailed but turbaned,’ and was said to have “exhibited a rather ferocious front”. In China, members of the Short Knife Society were distinguished with a sash or by a turban of red cloth.[6]
Excerpt from ‘China Service’, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (NSW : 1845 – 1860), 21 August, 1852, 3.
There was another report of an absconding from Wentworth’s service in 1853.[7] It is likely that the San Jen Ho brought before the court on this occasion was the same Isan In Ho.
Eric Rolls identified an instance of insurrection in December 1852 when a butcher named Taw Taw in the service of William Lawson Junior, led Chinese pastoral labourers on neighbouring properties to gather on Lawson’s property Errowanbang near Carcoar, armed for conflict.[8] Descriptions of the “military order” of the Chinese labourers under Taw Taw’s command suggest that Chinese labourers in the Bathurst district were organised and had found ways to communicate in spite of the isolation of their postings.
There was a spike in the number of incidents of organised resistance by Chinese indentured labourers in the Australian colonies before the Short Swords Society captured Amoy in May 1853, an event which brought the labour trade to an end.[9] The mutinous second voyage of the Spartan which left Amoy in January 1853 was the last ship to bring indentured labourers from Amoy to New South Wales.[10] The Chinese labour trade then shifted to Canton, Hong Kong and Macao.
As there is little heritage from the era of Chinese indentured labourers, the image use for this post is part of a carved frieze which would likely have graced the top of the front of an altar table in a temple. The frieze is now in the collection of McCrossins Mill, Uralla. As translator Ely Finch has written elsewhere on this site, while it is appealing to imagine that the three sheep carved at the right-hand side of the frieze reference the Chinese indentured labourers who worked as shepherds, they are a traditional Chinese motif commonly used at New Year.
This is a continually evolving website, and more information will be published as further research is conducted. This research is the copyright of the author and no part of it should be published elsewhere without the express permission of the author.
[1] Margaret Slocomb, Among Australia’s pioneers: Chinese indentured pastoral workers on the Northern frontier, 1848 to c. 1880, Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press, 2014, 278.
[2] “China”, Argus, 22 July, 1853.
[3] Slocomb, citing evidence of Robert Towns, 29 August 1854, New South Wales Legislative Council Select Committee on Asiatic Labour.
[4] Maxine Darnell, The Chinese labour trade to New South Wales 1783-1853: An exposition of motives and outcomes. Doctor of Philosophy, University of New England, 1998, Appendix 6, Table 3.
[5] ‘The Police Register’, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (NSW : 1845 – 1860), 21 August 1852, 3, viewed 07 Aug 2025, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article59775168
[6] ‘Chinese War.’, The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), 23 November 185, 5, viewed 07 Aug 2025, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12950544
[7] ‘Sydney Police Court.—Friday.’, Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1850 – 1875), 26 February 1853, viewed 07 Aug 2025, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60131076
[8] Eric Rolls, Sojourners: the epic story of China’s centuries-old relationship with Australia : flowers and the wide sea, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1992, 71.
[9] Slocomb, 278.
[10] Wang Sing-wu, The organization of Chinese emigration 1848-1888, San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center Inc. 1978, 369.