Author: Chinese Australian Historical Society

Marilyn Sue Dooley Email: goldensherds9@hotmail.com There is a Chinese proverb that says, ‘Upon the roots of the tree rest fallen leaves’. Among overseas Chinese communities, there was a cultural and familial obligation to return the bones of the dead to their home villages. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, burial registers and newspapers documented…

Wedding outfit of Go Shee Poon, Irene Poon’s paternal grandmother.Source: Leigh McKinnon, Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo, 1998. Have you ever wondered about the lives of your ancestors and the environment in which they lived? In 2014, I caught the bug to research my family history. I charted the usual family tree of my family, starting…

Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh Image: Mavis, aged 18, on a boat to Tientsin, and in Beijing, early 1950s.Source: Siaoman Yen & Richard Horsburgh My wife, Siaoman Yen, and I have embarked on a project to write a biography of Siaoman’s mother, Mavis Yen. Some CAHS members will already be familiar with Mavis as the…

I suspect I will never know the reason my greatgrandfather, Wong Yee Gwan, decided to leaveChina in the early 1870s and make his way to New South Wales. His incoming passenger recordand application for naturalization (if they exist) have been elusive. But is pinning down exactlywhen he came or chasing a reason why, really that…

By Marilyn Sue Dooley Ah Yin Ah Yin (c1844 -1885)Cantonese Storekeeper & Publican of Armagh Farm, Rosewood Diggings, Central Queensland. Dorothy Jean (Munns) Dooley (1916 – 1996), Rockhampton, Central Queensland.Source: Marilyn Sue Dooley. Source: Marilyn Sue Dooley. No other image of Ah Yin has emerged in the decades since Mum handed me his photograph, which…