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For a few short years, from the beginning of the 1850s to the early 60s, thousands of people flocked to Australia. The ships that brought them often swung empty at their moorings as both crews and passengers swarmed inland toward makeshift camps. The lure was gold.
With so many immigrants from different countries assembled on the goldfields, it wasnt long until threats to social stability were magnified in the form of racism.
One of the main driving forces behind this racism was competition on the goldfields. For example, initial racism centred on gold-seekers from the United States. With their experience gained on the Californian goldfields, the Americans were active and successful in Australia, not only in finding gold but in business too. This created some unease, especially from the British who had claimed Australia as theirs. Foreigners like the Americans were constantly arriving on their land to search for gold at potential places they had not discovered themselves. Subsequently, the British were not happy with these gold-seekers and racism based largely on fear of competition erupted.
Originally, most of the racism on the goldfields involved the Britishs disquiet over the presence of diggers from the United States and other foreigners as they arrived, which had their own concerns about competition. However, this changed when the Chinese arrived.
The Chinese, like so many others, came to Australia to dig for gold because there were problems in their own land. Although they only numbered about 1-% of the Australian population, the racism that resulted towards them was quite intense.
The Chinese looked different, they dressed differently and they ate different food from the Europeans. In addition, the Chinese digger living on the goldfields was usually not a free man like the European. Most of the Chinese diggers were hired workers, paying off a debt at home by digging gold for someone else. They didnt get drunk or fight and, of course, they did not speak English very well.
Many people (practically all non-Chinese diggers, most of whom were European) did not like the Chinese and adopted a racist attitude towards them basically because they were different.
It not only annoyed some diggers that the Chinese had their own ways, but when a mine/site had been finished with, they would go and look through what was left in the 'mullock' heap where they'd often find significant amounts of gold that the other miners had missed. Needless to say, this irritated many diggers, which also lead to a fair bit of racism towards the Chinese.
This racism was so well-established that even the state governments of Australia became involved. They tried to restrict the number of Chinese coming into Victoria and New South Wales (and other areas) partly because they did not want such a race making up a very large proportion of the Australian population. They did this by limiting numbers on ships and introducing a tax on each Chinaman entering restricted parts of the country.
Overall, however, the results of the racism against Chinese diggers were much more severe than a ten-pound tax. On many occasions, racism spilled over into hatred and hysteria with crimes committed against the Chinese. Riots were particularly frequent and in most cases, European diggers attacked Chinese camps, burned their tents, smashed equipment, beat and kicked them. Such riots occurred at Buckland River (Victoria) in 1847, The Crocodile Creek Goldfields (Queensland) in 1867 and at Lambing Flat (NSW) in 1861.In addition to this, the Chinese were often chased by the other diggers who cut off their pigtails. These ongoing results of racism lead to the separation of the Chinese from the rest of the goldmining societies. Chinese villages were typically set apart from the townships and a man known as a Chinese Protectorate was usually needed to make sure that his people were looked after and that others kept away from them and didn't hassle them.
Being such a widespread and significant topic, there were several different perspectives/views about anti-Chinese racism on the goldfields.
As part of being racist, many diggers spread stories and often believed strongly that the Chinese were "indescribably repulsive, dirty and disorganised..." On the other hand, some diggers looked beyond the stories and saw the Chinese for what they actually were. As one such digger put it, "The Chinese village was always very organised, they were wonderful gardeners, very clean people." In this case, racism developed from jealousy.
Like the European diggers, the Chinese also had their own views about each other. One Chinaman wrote, "Many of the European diggers are dirty, careless, lazy, rowdy and unfriendly." Although many Chinese people thought that, they kept their opinions to themselves.
Finally, there were also contrasting ideas when it came to the restriction of Chinese immigration. While most people thought that this was a good thing, mainly because of the attitude they had towards the Chinese, other people, although they may not have liked the Chinese, took a more positive stance. They claimed that Chinese immigration might as well continue if they were going to learn to live in the already multicultural society of Australia "Individual experience of living alongside people from different cultures will be best guide to showing the lie of the filth and disease so often ascribed to non-white people."
In my opinion, this statement stands true today, as the Chinese people have pride and great respect for being in Australia by sharing with us their cultures and traditions.
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