Abstract
By the late-nineteenth century Chinese market gardeners were widely dispersed across Australia and New Zealand and could be found in the most marginal areas for agriculture. This chapter outlines the physical environments of southern China, Australia and New Zealand, then traces the development of Chinese market gardening in the temperate areas of Australia and New Zealand. It explores how Chinese gardeners adapted their horticultural techniques to some of the more extreme environments in which they settled, ranging from the tropics of northern Australia and arid central Australia to the cool climate of Central Otago. Chinese market gardeners introduced new crop varieties to Australasia and incorporated indigenous plants into their repertoire. They played a key role in clearing and ‘developing’ the land, making it productive.
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Notes
- 1.
Kathryn Gleason, ‘To bound and to cultivate: an introduction to the archaeology of gardens and fields’, in Naomi Miller and Kathryn Gleason (eds.), The Archaeology of Garden and Field, Philadelphia, 1994, pp. 2–3.
- 2.
Francesca Bray and Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 6: Biology and Biological Technology, Part I: Agriculture by Francesca Bray, Cambridge, 1984, p. xxiv.
- 3.
Guohua Xu and L. J. Peel, The Agriculture of China, Oxford, 1991, pp. 1–4.
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 135–136; Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 19–20.
- 5.
James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, Dunedin, 1999, pp. 12, 16–19.
- 6.
George Hunter McNeur, letter, Outlook, 28 February 1903, p. 15.
- 7.
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, p. 33.
- 8.
Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, ‘Environmental History in Australasia’, p. 20, http://ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/wpcontent/uploads/Environmental_History_in_Australasia _2004.pdf, accessed 8 February 2013.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 20. See also Andrew Sturman and Nigel Tapper, The Weather and Climate of Australia and New Zealand, South Melbourne, 2006, pp. 344–345.
- 10.
Sturman and Tapper, Weather and Climate, pp. 344–345; Bureau of Meteorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/ausclim/zones.htm, accessed 10 May 2011.
- 11.
Stuart Macintyre, Concise History of Australia, Port Melbourne, 2009, p. 8.
- 12.
Michael Cathcart’s 2010 study explores how water has shaped the history of Australia, imposing a fundamental limit on how and where Australians live (Michael Cathcart, The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent, Melbourne, 2010, p. 2).
- 13.
Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and its People, Pymble, 1995, p. 195; and John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia, Washington, 1999, pp. 62–63.
- 14.
Powell, Historical Geography of Modern Australia, pp. 133–135; and Frawley, ‘Evolving visions’, pp. 62–63. See also Macintyre, Concise History of Australia, pp. 100–103.
- 15.
Robin and Griffiths, ‘Environmental History in Australasia’, p. 21.
- 16.
Sturman and Tapper, Weather and Climate, p. 345; and Brett Mullan, Andrew Tait and Craig Thompson, ‘Climate’, Te Ara – the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, updated November 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/climate, accessed 4 May 2011.
- 17.
Mullan, Tait and Thompson, ‘Climate’.
- 18.
Since European settlement there has been an 85 percent decline in wetlands in New Zealand, one of the most dramatic in the world (Geoff Park, ‘Swamps which might doubtless be easily drained: swamp drainage and its impact on the indigenous’, in Pawson and Brooking (eds.), Environmental Histories of New Zealand, pp. 151–158; and Pawson and Brooking, Environmental Histories of New Zealand, p. 10).
- 19.
Examples include the Chinese market gardens on the Mulwaree River at Goulburn, the Lachlan River at Hillston and the Castlereagh River at Gilgandra in New South Wales (Barry McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens in southern and western New South Wales’, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 36, July 2005, n.p.).
- 20.
A.J. Finn, ‘Suitable sites for market gardening’, Agricultural Gazette of NSW, Vol. XXVII Part 9, 2 September 1916, pp. 633–634.
- 21.
Ronald Knapp (ed.), Chinese Landscapes: The Village as Place, Honolulu, 1992. p. 6.
- 22.
See Zvonkica Stanin, ‘From Li Chun to Yong Kit: A Market Garden on the Loddon, 1851–1912’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 6, 2004, p. 22; Colleen Morris, ‘Chinese market gardens in Sydney’, Australian Garden History, Vol. 12, No. 5, March/April 2001, pp. 5, 7; Oline Richards, ‘Chinese market gardening: a Western Australian perspective’, Australian Garden History, Vol. 13, No. 1, July/August 2001, p. 19; Sandra Pullman, ‘Along Melbourne’s rivers and creeks’, Australian Garden History, Vol. 12, No. 5, March/April 2001, p. 9; and McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens’, n.p.
- 23.
Melbourne Age, 24 February 1865, reproduced in Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March 1865, p. 2.
- 24.
McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens’, n.p.
- 25.
Barry McGowan, ‘Adaptation and organization: the history and heritage of the Chinese in the Riverina and Western New South Wales, Australia’, Chinese America: History and Perspectives, Annual, 2007, p. 238.
- 26.
John West, Irrigation and Intense Culture, Melbourne, 1889, p. 86, quoted in Frost, ‘Migrants and technological transfer: Chinese farming in Australia, 1850–1920’, Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2002, p. 127.
- 27.
Edwin Brady, Australia Unlimited, Melbourne, 1919, pp. 263, 438, 445, 470, 498.
- 28.
Taylor argued that Australia could support only a limited population because of its limited resources and that efforts should be directed towards developing the better-watered areas of the south-east of the continent instead of the tropics and arid areas (J. M. Powell, ‘Thomas Griffith-Taylor’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1990, http://adb.anu.edu. au/biography/taylor-thomas-griffith-8765, accessed 30 April 2012).
- 29.
Smaller-scale irrigation schemes for agriculture were developed in Central Otago and Canterbury in the late nineteenth century with private and government involvement, for example those capturing the waters of the braided, snow-fed rivers crossing the Canterbury Plains to the sea (Benjamin Evans, A History of Agriculture, Production and Marketing in New Zealand, Palmerston North, 1969, p. 13; and Martin Ward and Shona Russell, Water Sharing Schemes: Insights from Canterbury and Otago, Report for Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, Wellington, 2010, p. 4.)
- 30.
Northern Advocate, Whangarei, 4 May 1920, p. 3.
- 31.
Chinese market gardeners were particularly affected by increases in land values and land rents, as the majority were lessees rather than land owners.
- 32.
Alex McLellan, ‘Market gardening in Otaki’, Otaki Historical Society Historical Journal, Vol. 5, 1982, p. 61; Anne Thorpe, ‘Otaki’s market gardens’, Otaki Historical Society Journal, 2008, p.13.
- 33.
Bay of Plenty Times, 24 November 1909, p. 2.
- 34.
Donald T. Hunt, ‘Market gardening in metropolitan Auckland’, MA Honours Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1956, pp. 45–46.
- 35.
Pamela Wai Shing, ‘Locational and structural changes of market gardening in Pukekohe–Bombay–Patumahoe’, MA Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1977, p. 15; and Thong Ling Lee, ‘Chinese market gardening in the Auckland region’, MA Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1974, pp. 14–15.
- 36.
New Zealand’s temperate climate restricted where the tropical and subtropical crops introduced by Polynesian settlers could be grown. The archaeological evidence for Māori gardening is most extensive in the northern half of the North Island, especially in coastal areas where frosts are rare or infrequent (Louise Furey, Maori Gardening: An Archaeological Perspective, Wellington, 2006, p. 21).
- 37.
The 100 hectare Otuataua Stonefields reserve is one of only two surviving remnants of these once extensive gardens. Department of Conservation, ‘Historic Otuataua Stonefields’, http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/historic/by-region/auckland/central-and-south-auckland/otuataua-stonefields/, accessed 11 February 2013.
- 38.
Lily Lee and Ruth Lam, Sons of the Soil: Chinese Market Gardeners in New Zealand, Pukekohe, 2012, p. 65.
- 39.
Dunstan Times, 23 September 1870.
- 40.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, pp. 65–69, 74–75.
- 41.
As occurred in Otaki in New Zealand in October 1908, destroying acres of potatoes (Evening Post, 28 October 1908, p. 6).
- 42.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, p. 432.
- 43.
Ibid., pp. 213, 283–284, 294, 297.
- 44.
Māori gardeners made a number of adaptations to traditional Polynesian horticultural practices in order to grow kumara in New Zealand’s temperate climate, including the introduction of a winter storage phase and other techniques such as soil lightening, mulching, and constructing raised planting beds or mounds and wind breaks (Helen Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening in New Zealand, Auckland, 1984, pp. 58, 61, 72).
- 45.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, pp. 412–413.
- 46.
The most popular Māori puha dish is called ‘boil up’. It consists of puha boiled with meat (pork, beef, mutton bird or often pork bones), potatoes and kumara (Mindfood, ‘Traditional Maori recipes’, 27 April 2012, http://www.mindfood.com/at-traditional-maori-recipes-global-tastes.seo, accessed 22 February 2013).
- 47.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, pp. 289–290.
- 48.
Kaaren Hiyama, High Hopes in Hard Times: A History of Grey Lynn and Westmere, Grey Lynn, 1991, p. 28.
- 49.
Ian Jack and Katie Holmes surveyed and excavated a small section of the site in 1984. The site was occupied by a series of Chinese leaseholders between 1883 and 1934. Ah Toy, after whom the site is named, was the last of the three leaseholders; he held the lease from 1900 until 1934 (Ian Jack and Katie Holmes, ‘Ah Toy’s garden: a Chinese market garden on the Palmer River goldfield, North Queensland’, Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. 2, 1984, pp. 51–52).
- 50.
Ibid., p. 51.
- 51.
Ibid., pp. 51–52.
- 52.
Ibid., p. 52.
- 53.
Ibid., pp. 55–56.
- 54.
Townsville Daily Bulletin, 31 May 1932, p. 9.
- 55.
Grant Vinning, Select Markets for Sweet Potato, Taro and Yam, Report for Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Kingston, ACT, May 2003, pp. 7, 37.
- 56.
Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, ‘About taro’, http://www.daff.qld.gov.au, accessed 27 March 2013.
- 57.
Jack Golson, ‘Aboriginal food plants: some ecological and cultural considerations’, in D. J. Mulvaney and J. Golson (eds.), Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1971, pp. 217, 222; and Doug Yen, ‘The sweet potato in historical perspective’, in Ruben Villareal and T. E. Griggs, International Symposium on Sweet Potato, Taiwan, 23–27 March 1981, AVRDC Publication 82–172, 1982, pp. 17–30.
- 58.
Tim Denham, Mark Donohue and Sara Booth, ‘Horticultural experimentation in northern Australia reconsidered’, Antiquity, Vol. 83, 2009, p. 645.
- 59.
Indentured labourers ‘blackbirded’ from the islands of Melanesia (predominantly Vanuatu, the Solomons, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea) formed the major workforce in the Queensland sugar industry from the 1860s (Henry Reynolds, North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia’s North, Crows Nest, 2003, pp. 38–41).
- 60.
Queenslander, 7 February 1885, p. 231.
- 61.
Bacchus Marsh Express, 30 November 1878, p. 3.
- 62.
Townsville Daily Bulletin, 6 September 1932, p. 7. The taro variety favoured by Chinese, and most commonly cultivated in Australia today, is a soft cooking type known as bun-long (Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, ‘About taro’, http://www.daff.qld.gov.au, accessed 27 March 2013).
- 63.
Argus, 25 September 1888, p. 43.
- 64.
Leonie Ryder, ‘Incorrigible colonist: ginger in Australia 1788–1950’, PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 2010, pp. 89–91.
- 65.
R. Bartlett, ‘The cultivation of ginger’, Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, November 1922, p. 818, cited in Ryder, ‘Incorrigible colonist’, p. 135.
- 66.
Ryder, ‘Incorrigible colonist’, p. 89.
- 67.
Queenslander, 19 January 1878, p. 27.
- 68.
Argus, 8 December 1886, p. 15.
- 69.
J. M. Powell, Plains of Promise, Rivers of Destiny: Water Management and the Development of Queensland 1824–1990, Bowen Hills, 1991, p. 54.
- 70.
Ibid., pp. 54–55.
- 71.
Reynolds, North of Capricorn, p. 78.
- 72.
Prior to Federation in 1901 at least three censuses of the European population in the Northern Territory were held, in 1881, 1891 and 1901. Aboriginal and Chinese people were not included (National Archives of Australia, ‘Commonwealth Government records about the Northern Territory’, http://guides.naa.gov.au/records-about-northern-territory/part2/chapter10/10.9.aspx, accessed 29 November 2016). See also Northern Territory Archives Service, ‘Chinese People in the Northern Territory’, https://dtc.nt.gov.au/arts-and-museums/northern-territory-archives-service/archives-subject-guides/chinese-people-in-nt, accessed 29 November 2016.
- 73.
Ibid., p. 111; C. Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia, Sydney, 1975, p. 35.
- 74.
Shi Kwong Ho, From My Darwin Notebook, Darwin, 1989, p. 43, quoted in Reynolds, North of Capricorn, p. 114.
- 75.
South Australian Register, 26 January 1878, p. 4S. Palmerston was the name first chosen for the capital of the Northern Territory in 1864. It was renamed Darwin in 1911 after administration of the Northern Territory passed from South Australia to the Commonwealth of Australia.
- 76.
Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 14 August 1903, p. 2.
- 77.
Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 3 August 1906, p. 2.
- 78.
Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 17 September 1897, p. 2.
- 79.
Reynolds, North of Capricorn, p. 110.
- 80.
Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 22 February 1879, p. 2.
- 81.
McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens’, 2005, n.p.
- 82.
Geoffrey Svenson, ‘Marginal people: the archaeology and the history of the Chinese at Milparinka’, MA Thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, 1994, pp. 7, 12.
- 83.
Ibid., pp. 135, 138.
- 84.
Report to Department of Mines, 1882, p. 99, quoted in Svenson, ‘Marginal people’, p. 40.
- 85.
Svenson, ‘Marginal people’, p. 72.
- 86.
Sturt Recorder, 8 March 1896, p. 2.
- 87.
Svenson, ‘Marginal people’, p. 131.
- 88.
Ibid., p. 93.
- 89.
Ibid., pp. 93, 99, 100, 106.
- 90.
Neville Ritchie, ‘Traces of the past: archaeological insights into the New Zealand Chinese experience in southern New Zealand’, in Manying Ip (ed.), Unfolding History, Evolving Identity: The Chinese in New Zealand, Auckland, 2003, p. 38.
- 91.
Franklin Hiram King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, London, 1949, p. 36.
- 92.
Svenson, ‘Marginal people’, pp. 87, 131.
- 93.
Ibid., p. 84. See also King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 70, 199, 257–258.
- 94.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 343. The former province of Chihli was dissolved in 1928 and the new province of Hebei created, carving out the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin (Wikipedia, ‘Hebei’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebei, accessed 3 June 2011).
- 95.
Svenson, ‘Marginal people’, p. 143.
- 96.
McGowan, ‘Adaptation and organization’, p. 238.
- 97.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 173–175.
- 98.
Ibid., p. 78.
- 99.
McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens’, 2005, n.p.
- 100.
Ibid.
- 101.
Register, Adelaide, 18 November 1913, p. 9.
- 102.
Jennifer Martiniello, ‘“As Strands of Plaited Music,” my Chinese-Aboriginal-Anglo heritage’, in Penny Edwards and Yuanfang Shen (eds.), Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Asian Encounters in Australia, 1901–2001, Canberra, 2003, pp. 28–29.
- 103.
Alexander Don, Annual Inland Tour 1896–1897, Dunedin, 1897, p. 480; see also Christian Outlook, 3 July 1897, p. 268.
- 104.
Neville Ritchie, ‘Traces of the past: archaeological insights into the New Zealand Chinese experience in southern New Zealand’, in Manying Ip (ed.), Unfolding History, Evolving Identity: The Chinese in New Zealand, Auckland, 2003, pp. 32, 45.
- 105.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, p. 21.
- 106.
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, p. 321.
- 107.
Neville Ritchie, pers. comm., February 2011.
- 108.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 67–68.
- 109.
Jeffrey Fee, ‘Idaho’s Chinese Mountain Gardens’, in Priscilla Wegars (ed.), Hidden Heritage: Historical Archaeology of the Overseas Chinese, Amityville, 1993, pp. 65–66.
- 110.
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, p. 323; and Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, p. 21.
- 111.
When Phil George ate with the Chinese at Kyeburn, the menu included Chinese cabbage, Chinese radish, Chinese parsley, garlic and celery (Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, fn. 151b, p. 341).
- 112.
Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 36.
- 113.
Alexander Don, ‘Chinese Mission Work in Otago: Nineteenth Annual Inland Tour, 1905–1906’, Dunedin, 1906, p. 26.
- 114.
Outlook, 14 April 1906, p. 13.
- 115.
Outlook, 11 May 1901, p. 26.
- 116.
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, fn. 151a, p. 341.
- 117.
Fruit growing was a long-established tradition in China and fruit trees had rich aesthetic and symbolic associations as well as economic value (Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China, London, 1996).
- 118.
Otago Witness, 1 March 1894, p. 4; 4 March 1897, p. 26; and 24 February 1898, p. 26.
- 119.
Otago Witness, 28 May 1896, p. 25.
- 120.
Otago Witness, 11 November 1903, p. 27.
- 121.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, p. 31.
- 122.
Otago Witness, 11 November 1903, p. 27.
- 123.
Alexander Don, NZ Presbyterian Chinese Mission Inland Tours XXIII and XXIV 1909–1911 and Westland Tour, 1911, reprinted from the Outlook, Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, 1911, p. 11.
- 124.
Beattie, ‘Hungry dragons: expanding the horizons of Chinese environmental history–Cantonese gold-miners in colonial New Zealand 1860s-1920s’, International Review of Environmental History, Vol. 1, 2015, n.p.; William Heinz, Bright Fine Gold: Stories of the New Zealand Goldfields Wellington, 1974, p. 17.
- 125.
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, fn. 77, p. 167.
- 126.
Neville Ritchie, ‘Archaeology and history of the Chinese’, p. 60.
- 127.
Beattie, ‘Hungry dragons’, n.p.
- 128.
John McCraw, Mountain Water and River Gold: Stories of Gold Mining in the Alexandra District, Dunedin, 2000.
- 129.
Ibid., pp. 227–229.
- 130.
Ibid., p. 229. The physical remains of Lye Bow’s garden and orchard are listed on the register of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as an Historic Area (NZHPT, Register No. 7547, New Zealand Historic Places Trust, ‘Lye Bow’s Historic Area’ http://www.historic.org.nz/theregister/RegisterSearch/ RegisterResults.aspx?RID=7547, accessed 14 June 2011).
- 131.
Dunstan Times, 14 October 1898, quoted in Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, p. 321. The Matakanui garden was still in existence in 1911, when Don reported that there were five men working there (Outlook, 1 August 1911, p. 14).
- 132.
Tuapeka Times, 26 September 1874.
- 133.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, p. 45.
- 134.
Helen Leach, pers. comm., 4 February 2011.
- 135.
Donald T. Hunt, ‘Market Gardening in Metropolitan Auckland’, MA Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1956, p. 54.
- 136.
Lee and Lam, Sons of the Soil, pp. 89, 91.
- 137.
Taranaki Herald, 9 June 1892, p. 2.
- 138.
Evening Post, 20 November 1905, p. 8.
- 139.
Ted Chung Gon, ‘James Chung Gon’, Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation, La Trobe University, www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au, accessed 20 May 2012.
- 140.
Mercury, Hobart, 21 September 1942, p. 3.
- 141.
The Chung Gon family greengrocer business was still in operation in Launceston in 2014 (Andrew Piper, pers. comm., January 2014).
- 142.
Jill Cassidy, ‘Chung Gon, James (1854–1952)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/chung-gon-james-9745/ text17213, accessed 3 November 2013.
- 143.
Mercury, Hobart, 28 March 1949, p. 7.
- 144.
Mercury, Hobart, 28 July 1953, p. 12.
- 145.
Mercury, Hobart, 28 August 1942, p. 3 and 28 July 1953, p. 12.
- 146.
Mercury, Hobart, 28 July 1953, p. 12.
- 147.
Lesley Head, Pat Muir and Eva Hampel, ‘Australian backyard gardens and the journey of migration’, Geographical Review, Vol. 94, No. 3, July 2004, p. 326.
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Boileau, J. (2017). The Physical Environment. In: Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51871-8_3
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