SLATY CREEK CHINESE GARDEN AND SLUICING SITE
SLATY CREEK ROAD CABBAGE TREE, HEPBURN SHIRE
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Statement of Significance
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SLATY CREEK CHINESE GARDEN AND SLUICING SITE - History
The garden would have been established in the late 1850s when newly arrived Chinese miners sought means of
living in the bush among predominantly European miner settlers. When the main Creswick gold rush ended
around 1860, many Chinese stayed on and mined the areas initially taken up by Europeans, or ran other
enterprises. The banks of Slaty Creek, particularly upstream of this garden site, were sluiced by many hundreds
of Chinese people living along the Creek – resulting in deep gullies that have partly revegetated today but are
seldom visited. Many Chinese left the Creswick area by the late 1900s, partly as a result of harsh conditions and
both official and community discrimination.
La Gerche in the 1880s reported (Taylor 1998) Ah Chow was associated with a bend on Slaty Creek at the
Ironstone location just of the Chinese Garden and Sluicing site - around the turn of the century. Len Goldsmith
(2000:2) recalled ‘An old Chinaman lived up on the bank there. He had his garden down there on the flat and
surfacing work surrounded it.’
As the number of Chinese dwindled in the 1880s and 1890s, some continued to live in huts and grow
vegetables as they had for many years. They were recognised as expert gardeners and were generally
‘industrious, honest, generous, and law abiding (Graham 1987:63). John La Gerche (1885) recorded the names
and locations of some Chinese during his patrols through nearby Creswick forests in 1885:- Ah Li You (hut) Mopoke 13 years
- Ah Loch (hut) Slaty Creek 13 years
- Fat Yet (hut) Mopoke 8 years
- Ah Kam (hut) Mopoke 14 years
- Gat You (1 acre garden & hut) Forty Foot 18 years
- Lou Hem (1 acre garden & hut) Forty Foot 18 years
- Li Ha (hut) Slaty Creek 18 years
- Ah Chow (hut) Slaty Creek 18 years
- Ah Yat (hut) Mopoke 18 years
- For Chong Ki Fong (hut) Mopoke 18 years
Although other names of other Chinese gardeners who developed and ran this particular garden near Slaty
Creek are not known, there is considerable evidence of the involvement of Chinese immigrants in mining and in
developing the network of water races in the Cabbage Tree area. Davies et al (2014) report that Chinese often
partnered with European miners in developing water infrastructure vital to the needs of mining and gardening
in the Slaty Creek and Mopoke Gully areas. For example, the miner John Wolfe and Wun Yee developed the Slaty
Creek Hydraulic Sluicing Company, which probably owner the main race supplying this Chinese Garden site and
surrounding sluicing. However, some Chinese held mining licences and Chinese-built races were important in
providing water for mining and several Gardens in the area (most of which have now been ruined).
Relatively recent knowledge of this garden site was publicised in the 1970s when the large area of beds was
‘rediscovered’ after a large fire in the Slaty Creek area, by the sister of Creswick Historian David Henderson (Henderson 2010).
________
Notes From Graham 1942 (p52).
Creswick’s first gold licence was issued in late 1853 (p52). By then most of Creswick’s creeks, flats and hills had
been ‘opened’ by diggers but the population was small until mid 1854 when a rush of diggers arrived. By late
1954 miners tents extended along the main road of Creswick and west along Creswick Creek to Long Point and
east on Creswick Creek and Slaty Ck and their tributaries. Most miners slept on the ground on a bed of leaves. Tents for
stores later progressed to slab huts, as protection against burglars.
[Graham p 61] After the richest parts had been worked out, Chinese parties began operating on the remainder, by removing the
alluvial material by excavating down to the Silurian bedrock
From ‘Semmens Collection’. University pf Melbourne (See Creswick Museum Facebooks site).
The experience of Chinese miners after the Creswick gold rush was tough. By the 1860s the gold that brought them to ‘New Gold
Mountain’ was largely gone. However, some stayed on, occupying small huts on the outskirts of town. Living conditions were
hard, but they got by through maintaining small gardens, fossicking and sluicing shallow claims. Rearing pigs was another aspect
of their lives.
Only some of the appalling treatment received by Chinese has been documented. One of many controversies occurred in July
1902, when an elderly Chinese gardener and long-time Creswick resident One Sin was shot by a seventeen year old local:
http://bit.ly/VxJFEI. Although the death was suspicious, the shooting was ruled to be accidental. By this time the Chinese
population was aging and, with no new immigrants arriving, diminished to a small group. This led “Bobby Fun Yet to be labelled
as “the last Chinaman in Creswick. In 1923 “Bobby” Fun Yet died aged 76.
See the album here: http://on.fb.me/1uko8uZ
_____
From: Fullwood (2014) Spirit of China in Creswick, Creswick Museum.
Most Chinese who travelled to the Australia G Rush in the mid 1850s were men from the Pearl Delta, Guandong and Fujian
Province. In the year 1856, 12 396 arrived in one year. Many made the voyage under a credit-ticket system managed by
brokers and emigration agents. Not all made their fortune, and some families in China were left to pay the debt.
Chinese had been in Australia since the 1840s working as shepherds and farmers, but the large influx of ’different looking’
people arriving in the 1850s aroused fears among many of the Europeans, who made it difficult for the Chinese to gain rights
available to other immigrants. In 1855 the Colony of Victoria imposed a 10 pound landing tax for Chinese gold seekers, so
from 1857 the agents chose to disembark Chinese passengers at Robe in South Australia and walked about 350 - 400 km to
Victoria. A total of 33 ships arrived in 1857 with nearly 15 000 aboard. In 1863 the landing stopped because Victoria
pressured S Australia to restrict Chinese entry.
In 1864 W Moodie recorded (in his book ’A pioneer in Western Victoria’) records passing hundreds of Chinese diggers
walking in single file, each with the proverbial two baskets hanging from a pole – going to the diggings.
Conditions for the Chinese were hard, with regulations on living sites, residence tax enforced by a local police commissioner.
Chinese in Creswick lived in tents and later huts in Black Lead camp (now in Calembeen Park), but many set up camps south
east of town in Slaty Creek and Mopoke Gully, Humbug Hill and other mining sites outside Creswick. Some became
storekeepers or set up gardens and hawked their produce to other settlers in and around the town. (Fullwood 2014 p6).
Records of court proceedings show that pork was one common product marketed by Chinese gardeners.
‘Examples of costs of garden produce are: 4 pounds of pork – @ 3 shillings; Cabbage @ 6 pence; 28 pounds of Rice 7.5
shillings.’
Court records also show settlements of problems between Chinese husbands and European wives.
The Creswick Advertiser records that anti-Chinese feelings led to the formation of a ‘Creswick Anti-Chinese Immigration
Society’ . Despite rates for Chinese labour being much lower ( 27 shillings per week) than for European labour (40 shillings
per week), very few Chinese were employed on large mines around Creswick. Chinese preferred to work mainly above
ground and with other Chinese surface diggers, or in gardening, building of water races or other work.
Some indication of hardships encountered in the Goldfields by Chinese miners are mentioned in a study of the names
recorded of deaths from between 1854-1955 in cemeteries in the Ballarat area (Brumley et al 1953). Most Chinese deaths in
Creswick were through mining accidents, such as ‘fall of earth’, ‘fall down shaft’, ‘congestion of lungs’ and other violent
causes such as ‘fracture of spine’ and stabbing. There were also deaths from gastroenteritis, pulmonary disease, suicide
and ‘effects of opium. Very few deaths were of natural causes.SLATY CREEK CHINESE GARDEN AND SLUICING SITE - Interpretation of Site
This Chinese Garden site and gardening practice clearly had to be ‘integrated’ (by gardeners and miners) into the development and operation of gold mining practices, especially sluicing of gullies to the south and the north of the garden. The Garden bed area (Fig. 2) is situated on the northern edge of a major sluiced gully, and there is a substantial drain and bank on the south and southeast side of the bed-area to prevent erosion into the deb area of the garden. The inherently poor quality Ordovician soils, required careful selection of a flat area of land, building up soil and beds with available alluvium and organic (manure) matter, and then careful protection of the area from mining practices and erosion. It is surprising that the garden could have been maintained (and still survives) under such high pressure from land and people. Today the site can be accessed from Slaty Creek Road, where a small fire dam east of the road marks a junction with an eroded 4WD track. Walk down the track downhill (northeast) towards Slaty Creek, passing the large dam on the left after 150 metres. The gardens site is about 200 m further down the track on the right (south) side. The site can also be conveniently reached by walkers on the ‘iconic’ Goldfields Trail (part of the Great Dividing Trail), which runs parallel Slaty Creek 30 m east of the northeast corner of the garden site. Slaty Creek Campsite No 3 is about 600 m to the north of the garden site.
Heritage Inventory Description
SLATY CREEK CHINESE GARDEN AND SLUICING SITE - Heritage Inventory Description
The site is in Creswick Regional Park – and in Hepburn Shire The Chinese Garden (beds and ponds) occupies about 0.5 ha on the west slope of Slaty Creek, about 200 m west of the Creek. The garden itself is associated with various other heritage items, such an earth dam to the west, which supplied water to the garden but also to extensive sluicing operations in (now) gullies to the south and north of the garden and dam. A major water races supplied water to the dam from the east and a network of small water races run rom the dam to the gardens and the heavily worked gullies. The main features of the garden area itself is a large number of small ridged ‘beds’ (running in various directions with and across the slope) and water storage ponds and small channels between the ridged beds. The site would have been fenced with bush fencing, and soil fertility enrichment would have depended on collection of night soil from human dwellings, and also the use of pig manure.
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