Australian Theme - peopling Australia.
NSW Theme - ethnic influences.
Local Themes - activities associated with common cultural traditions and people of shared descent.

Chinese store, place or object identified with a particular group, Greek Café and ethnic site.

A number of small but significant ethnic groups has been identified in the researching of mining, pastoralism, business and land ownership.  These groups include the Chinese, Germans and Greeks.

Chinese

In 1862 the Bingera town residents petitioned the government for a post office.  In support of the application they claimed they had to ride some 18 miles to the gold diggings south of the town and the diggings were all but abandoned.  In reply to the petition, the Gold Commissioner Mr G. Addison stated:

The post office should not be removed although the number of Europeans at the old Bingera diggings was very small, there were upwards of 350 Chinese located there, who carried on a very large correspondence.  In the absence of a gold escort, they used the post extensively to send gold away.

The only evidence of their presence in Uper Bingara is the small Chinese cemetery, some scattered mine workings, water races and several stacks of stones.  The Chinese also constructed a Joss House there.

The Bingara Telegraph in April 1900 reported a wedding of Mr Charley Gum, a well-known Chinese market gardener of Barrack Creek and Miss E. Gilchrist of Tamworth.  The service was conducted by the Reverend Parsons of the Wesley Church of Bingara at the home of Mr David Jones of Upper Bingara.  There was no fellow Chinese amongst the fourteen ladies and gentlemen guests present.

In March 1906 the Warialda Standard announced that the tender of Lo Young Sing, owner of the Warialda Chinese markets had been accepted by the White Bros. for ringbarking 14,000 acres on the Tucka Tucka Road.  It appeared that twenty-five men probably Chinese would be employed at once.

In November 1934 Elizabeth Annie Kam of Bingara, a Chinese national born at Singleton 38 years ago, announced her intention to apply for naturalization.

There are numerous reports of a Chinese market garden situated on the northern banks of the Warialda Creek.  Country Directories record Chinese gardener companies at Warialda in 1904 and 1926:

NSW Post Office and Country Directory, 1904- Young Hing and Co.

NSW Country Commercial Directory, 1926- Sam Kee and Co.  (The Warialda Standard refers to Sam Lee and Co.)

In 1982 a history of the Rose family was published and in the account an elderly citizen Mrs Eva Younie recalled: ‘on the bank of the creek, six Chinese gardeners irrigated the area using a horse and whim.  They grew a great variety of vegetables for the town and these were sold from door to door from a cart’.  The Warialda Standard, 18 March 1918 reported an incident involving two Chinese: Su Mut, who was employed at the local gardens and Ah Gow, a gardener at ‘Coolootai Station’.  According to local historian, Mervyn Williamson Jimmy Lum Foo was a gardener at the market gardens situated at the creek.

It was in March 1918 that Sam Lee and Co. announced to the public that payments in connection with the Warialda Gardens were not to be made to C. Sumut and C. Lemon.  Business was only to be conducted with George Hook, Yee Foo, George Low and King Hoy.  Eighteen years later, Ah Lum trading as Sam Lee and Co. announced that he had disposed of his Vegetable Gardens to Ah Lee and would be leaving in two weeks time.

Lum Foo a Chinese gardener aged 72 years died in the Warialda Hospital in February 1939.  He ‘was to be seen daily driving his old grey horse and vegetable cart around the town’.

An examination of the Bingara Telegraph from 1897 to 1901 reports a Fruit Shop in Bingara, W.C. Fung Got (1900) and a marker garden which Ah Young sold to Chung Lay and returned to China in 1900.  

Bob Kirk described a Chinese market garden situated on the southern end of Junction Street on the banks of the creek.  Roy Kam conducted the garden and there was a shed on the property with living quarters.  Roy G. Kam died on 24 October 1979 aged 63 years and is buried in the Bingara cemetery.  Other members of the Kam family are buried in the cemetery.

As the Chinese were displaced from mining, they wandered the countryside looking for work.  ‘Besides shepherding, shearing and cooking, they became proficient at ring-barking, cleaning out dams, fencing and other rural work’.  Mahaffey also describes their method of ring barking using a frilled or single cut done with a large seven-pound axe.  With picks and shovels and baskets, they also excavated many large dams.

A survey of heritage sites by Russell Blanch refers to a number of Chinese sites: a Chinaman’s dam, rock wall and boulders, ‘Lonewood’; Chinese burial ground, stone heaps, ‘Vallyn’; Chinese grave site, lightly rock outlined grave, ‘Forest View’; Chinese earth dam, Ottleys Creek now a modified larger earth dam, ‘Spring Dale’.  Chinese burial grounds were located east of Warialda near ringbarker’s camps, c1880s.  Chinese former gold and tin miners who worked in gangs under contract, did most of the ring barking.  Later in the 1890 and early 1900, these gangs worked on the pastoral stations cutting prickly pear.