Slides from presentation by Dr Kate Bagnall at the Visible Immigrants Seven conference, Flinders University/Migration Museum, Adelaide, Australia on 14 December 2012. ABSTRACT From as early as the late 1850s, Chinese migrant fathers began taking their Australian families to China. Over the eighty years or so that followed, hundreds of young Australians—some full Chinese, some part Chinese and some of full European descent—accompanied their Chinese fathers and step fathers to Hong Kong and southern China, particularly to the Pearl River Delta counties in Guangdong province. For some men, these return journeys signalled the end of an Australian sojourn, while for others it was but a temporary return to their homeland—an opportunity to take care of business or family matters, to educate children, or to visit with friends and relatives before returning ‘home’ once again to Australia. This paper drew on records created in the administration of the Immigration Restriction Act—legislation which limited the mobility of Chinese people in and out of Australia—to explore this history of geographical mobility in Chinese Australian families. While records of travel in the colonial period are limited, after the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901 officials kept careful track of Chinese leaving Australia to ensure that those who returned had the right to do so. The detailed administrative records created by these officials provide information that can be used to investigate both the motivations and mechanisms of travel by Chinese men and their Australian families in the early White Australia period. Why did Chinese fathers take their Australian children with them to China? Where did they travel to? How did they get there? How long did they spend overseas? What did they do there? And, finally, how did they negotiate their personal and familial mobility within the restrictions imposed by White Australia?

1. Chinese fathers and their
Australian families return to China,
1902–1940
Kate Bagnall
www.katebagnall.com
Visible Immigrants Seven
‘On the wing’: Mobility before and after emigration to Australia
14–15 December 2012
Flinders University in association with the Migration Museum, Adelaide

2. William Flood Sam
78-year-old gardener William
Flood Sam, 1915
NAA: SP42/1, C1915/4058

3. A mobile migrant
who put down roots
Arrived in NSW in 1860, aged 23
Lived at:
 Tambaroora (near Hill End) 3 years
 Wagga Wagga 18 years
 Marsden 12 years
 Barmedman / Wyalong 22 years
Worked as:
 miner
 cook
 labourer
 grocer
 gardener
Lived in NSW for 55 years
NAA: SP42/1, C1915/4058

4. Part of the
West Wyalong
community
William Flood Sam was
described as ‘a good
hardworking sober man’
and ‘a man of first-class
character’.
His wife, Jane Sam, was a
said to be a ‘highly
esteemed resident’ of the
district.
NAA: SP42/1, C1915/4058
West Wyalong Advocate,
19 October 1944
Australian Town and Country
Journal, 1 January 1898

5. ‘That famous
fighting family’
Four of the eight sons of
William and Jane Flood Sam
went to fight in World War I.
This image shows the seven
eldest boys.
In all Jane Sam gave birth to
16 children over 27 years.
Wyalong Advocate, 24 June 1919
Undated newspaper clipping, c. 1915

6. Percy Flood Sam
Fourteen-year-old Percy Flood
Sam before his departure for
China, 1915
NAA: SP42/1, C1915/4032

7. Paperwork
Percy’s handprint and
photograph were taken and
kept on file so he could be
identified on returning to
Australia.
William was granted a
Certificate Exempting from
Dictation Test.
NAA: SP42/1, C1915/4032
NAA: ST84/1, 1915/179/81-90

8. Immigration
Restriction Act
1901
‘An Act to place certain
restrictions on Immigration
and to provide for the removal
from the Commonwealth of
prohibited Immigrants.’
NAA: A1559, 1901/17
foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-16.html

9. 40,000 non-Europeans, mainly Chinese, were
resident in Australia in 1901 … The frequency of
their travel in and out of the country stimulated
the administration to develop elaborate
processes to monitor their movement. In the
absence of a definition of citizenship, or of a
definition of migration in legislative form, these
Australians, many of whom were British subjects
by birth or naturalisation, were of special interest
in the governance of the boundaries of migration
and domestic exclusionary policies.
Paul Jones, Alien Acts: The White Australia Policy, 1901 to 1939, p. 20

10. 50,000 CEDTs
15,000 case files
90 shelf metres of records
Invisible Australians: ‘The real face of White Australia’
http://invisibleaustralians.org/faces/

11. Chinese men travelling from Sydney in 1903
Sample of 95 men granted Certificates of Domicile in NSW in 1903.
Age
 22 to 61 years old
 Most in their 30s and 40s
When did they arrive in Australia?
 Earliest 1858, latest 1900
 Most arrived in the 1880s
Occupation
 bookkeeper, scholar, missionary, cook, laundry proprietor, newspaper proprietor, clerk
 Cabinetmaker (6)
 Merchant (8)
 Storekeeper (17)
 Gardener (51)
Family
 70 had no family (given their ages, likely that some would have married on return to China)
 18 had wives and families in China
 5 had wives and families in NSW (3 white, 1 NSW-born Anglo-Chinese, 1NSW-born Chinese)
 2 had just children with them in NSW (1 boy was accompanying his father to China)
NAA: ST84/1, Chinese with certificates numbered between 03/1 and 03/110

12. Visits to China were occasions to:
 marry
 pay respects to elders and ancestors
 see wives and children
 enhance the family status by displays of
material and financial wealth gained by
work overseas
 organise the education of children
 seek traditional cures for ailments
 spend time in a world where language and
customs were familiar.
Janis Wilton, Golden Threads: The Chinese in Regional NSW 1850–1950, p. 111.

13. Tung Wah Times, 17 February 1923
Eastern & Australian Steamship Company’s Illustrated Handbook
to the East, 1904, p. xvii

14. South China coast from the Pearl River Delta to Amoy
Most Chinese in Australia came from the Pearl River Delta region, south of Canton and inland from Hong Kong.

15. Gan family
NAA: B13, 1933/22224
Tart family in Hong Kong
Tart McEvoy papers, Society of Australian
Genealogists 6/16/4
Ah Yin family
NAA: SP42/1, C1916/7308 PART 1

16. Holidays and
visiting family

17. Hoe family
John Hoe and his NSW-born wife
Mary took their two children, aged
four and one, to China in 1905.
The stated purpose of the trip was
business, and to introduce Mary and
the children to John Hoe’s mother and
friends.
John Hoe returned to Sydney in 1906,
Mary and their son returned in 1909.
There is nothing on record to show
whether the daughter, Jessie, ever
returned to Australia.
NAA: ST84/1, 1905/331-340
NAA: SP42/1, B1905/1863

18. To provide care for
‘motherless’ children

19. William and
Charles Lumb Liu
This photo was taken in about 1900 before
the boys were sent to China by their father
to live with his extended family.
Their mother had been institutionalised.
Their younger sister was taken into state
care and was later adopted by a Chinese
family in NSW.
The elder boy, William, returned from
China eight years later. Charles also later
returned.
Reproduced in Neville Meaney (ed.), Under New
Heavens: Cultural Transmission and the Making of
Australia

20. To provide care for
adopted children

21. Frederick Wong Yong
Born in Glen Innes, NSW, in 1897 to a
white mother and Chinese father.
Adopted by Yau Kong, a merchant and
commission agent who had been in
Australia since 1875.
Lived with Yau Kong at Chinese
Freemason’s Hall in Sydney.
Went to China at age 8 in 1905. No
record of his return.
NAA: SP42/1, B1905/1996; B1905/1997
NAA: ST84/1, 1905/331-340; 1905/341-350

22. Chinese education and
upbringing

23. Charles Allen
Born in Sydney in 1896 and raised by his
white mother.
Taken to China by his Chinese father in
1909, aged 13.
His father returned to Australia and
Charles remained overseas with relatives
until 1915.
While away he learnt to speak what he
called ‘China talk’, but he was very
homesick and unhappy in China.
NAA: SP42/1, C1922/4449
NAA: ST84/1, 1909/22/41-50

24. Permanent return
to China

25. Alfred Ernest Ablong, born in
Waterloo in 1886.
Ablong family
Married a Hong Kong English
woman in 1915 and had 11
In 1902, John Ablong and his children.
Anglo-Chinese wife Emma
took their family of six Sydney- Was killed during the
Japanese occupation of Hong
born children to Hong Kong to Kong in World War II.
live.
John and Emma’s marriage fell
apart, but the family remained
in Hong Kong.
The children grew up and
were married there.
Some of the family returned to Emma Ablong nee Ah Kin,
live in Australia after the born in 1865 on the Delegate
1950s. Diggings.
NAA: SP42/1, 1914/64
Barbara Moore, Eurasian Roots

26. Returning to Australia
as ‘immigrants’

27. Ruby Ping Fong,
Mrs George Cumines
Born in Sydney in July 1912.
Returned to China with her mother
in 1913.
Her father died soon after in NSW
and she remained in China.
Returned to Sydney in 1930, aged 18,
married to Sydney resident George
Cumines.
Had to pay a bond until she could be
identified and her stay was approved
by the minister.
NAA: SP42/1, C1930/1281

28. Ongoing connections

29. Ernest Sung Yee
Went to China with his father
and younger brother in 1909.
Returned to Australia in 1921.
Made return trips to China in
the 1920s and 30s.
Did not speak English and his
wife and children remained in
China.
NAA: ST84/1, 1909/20/21-30
NAA: J2483, 365/48
NAA: J2483, 496/86
http://archive.org/details/1933-10-16_Anzac_In_Curious_Racial_Mix-Up

30. kate.bagnall@gmail.com
chineseaustralia.org
invisibleaustralians.org