THE CHINESE IN BEECHWORTH IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY - 
The Beechworth Secondary College / Access Asia China Site

Beechworth is a city in North Eastern Victoria. It is 267 kilometres from Melbourne. Beechworth has many reminders of the Chinese gold miners of last century. Gold was first discovered in the region in 1852.

Helen McIntyre is a teacher at Beechworth Secondary College. In May 1996 she was part of a delegation of Australian teachers to China. She took along photographs of Beechworth to show Chinese students in Guangdong Province. Some of these photos can be seen on this page.

The best known image of the Chinese at Beechworth are the twin burning towers at Beechworth Cemetery. These "Twin Burning Towers" are believed to be unique in Australia. The towers were used for ceremonial offerings, not for cremations.

Beechworth's Chinese Cemetery is sited on a hill-slope which is the auspicious custom in Southern China. Australian-Chinese photographer William Yang describes this cemetery as "the most beautiful in Australia".

In Beechworth's Chinese cemetery there are many headstones. This headstone has Chinese characters, telling who the person was and where he came from.

Helen now believes that the inscription should be read (from left to right) as follows.

Column 1: The name of the place of birth of the deceased - Guang Hai. This is a small coastal village near Jiangmen City in Guangdong Province in Southern China. The village exists today.
Column 2: The first two characters read as Double Beauty. This was the deceased man's name. What was his name in Cantonese? The other characters in the second column are a salutation. Can you find out what this is?
Column 3: This describes where the village of Guang Hai is. It says the village is in the Tai Shan region, which is SSW of Jiangmen City.

This Chinese ceremonial "tiger shield" is one of a pair in the Chinese section of Beechworth's Burke Museum in Ford Street. There is a collection of ceremonial weapons, cultural artefacts and photos too.

The Museum also includes many visual records of the Chinese. This is a photograph from 1873:

It shows the annual Chinese Boxing Day Procession in 1873 in Beechworth. Banners were commissioned by the local Chinese community & made in Guangdong Province, China, for the Festival. The Chinese were generous donors to the Beechworth hospitals.

A cartoonist's impression of this important annual event for the Chinese settlers comes from the 1870s or 1880s.

What attitudes are being expressed here? Do you think the cartoonist was Chinese or European?

This is the first stage of Beechworth Secondary College's contribution to the Access Asia China Site for Australian Students. Wait for more of our work on the Chinese on the Australian Goldfields.

Our email address is bworthsc@netc.net.au. We look forward to hearing from you.