Stories in ceramic

01 Arrival in the Land of Cakes, Bern Emmerichs, 2019. The ship that brought 350 prospective Chinese miners to Australia in 1857 was Scottish and took its odd name Land of Cakes from a popular nickname for Scotland, a country known for its oatcakes. ANMM Collection 00055464 02 The Celestials Trek, Bern Emmerichs, 2019. In the 19th century, the term ‘Celestial’ was commonly used in newspapers to refer to Chinese migrants to Australia and North America. The Celestial Empire is an old name for China. ANMM Collection 00055465 03 New Gold Mountain Xin Jin Shan, Bern Emmerichs, 2020. This tableau features portraits of Hannie Kay based on those in the State Library of Victoria, and the artist’s imagined view of his wife Fanny, of whom no portraits are known. It also depicts historic Creswick buildings, including the courthouse where Hannie worked as official interpreter, and names from the petition of 30 April 1867 from Chinese residents to Creswick Council. ANMM Collection 00055466

The Celestial Trek

Chinese miners on the Victorian goldfields

Three newly acquired artworks by Bern Emmerichs focus on a controversial period in Australian history, when authorities were trying to control Chinese migration to the goldfields. As a series these works help bring to life this complex and fascinating era in our history – a time of shameful racism, the lure of wealth, strangers meeting in strange lands, and resilience against the odds. By Daina Fletcher.

IN JULY 1851 THE NEW COLONY OF VICTORIA was inaugurated. Fuelled by the discovery of gold, its population jumped from 70,000 in 1850 to 500,000 in 1860 as people massed in Victoria from around the globe. After news reached China, then suffering widespread poverty and famine, thousands left their homelands and made their way to what they called Xin Jin Shan – New Gold Mountain. The Chinese miners attracted particular hostility. In 1855 the Victorian government passed the first legislation to restrict Chinese immigration to the colonies, applying prohibitive passenger limits per ship, a poll tax of £10 per Chinese passenger and a heavy import duty on opium. This did nothing to prevent the rush, however. Shipowners instead sailed to free ports in South Australia, which had no landing tax and only a 5 per cent tax on opium. They disembarked their Chinese passengers at Port Adelaide or Guichen Bay, near Robe, from where the prospective miners trekked up to 700 kilometres overland to the Victorian diggings. Bern Emmerichs’ series of three ceramic paintings are Arrival of the Land of Cakes, The Celestials Trek and New Gold Mountain Xin Jin Shan. They explore this historical event in the artist’s distinctive flowing and detailed figurative style, which pays homage to Chinese imagery, iconography and the export porcelain that was made for the European market from the 16th century onwards.

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Ambrotype portrait of Henry (Hannie) Kay, c 1855–60. State Library of Victoria

The discrimination faced by the miners on the goldfields was widely documented

The ship Land of Cakes arrived in Guichen Bay, Robe, on 16 January 1857 directly from Hong Kong, landing 350 passengers. It is widely celebrated as the first ship to enter the port to avoid the £10 Victorian poll tax. Research into shipping arrivals and departures indicates there were many earlier arrivals to Guichen Bay from 1855 via Port Adelaide, carrying hundreds of unnamed Chinese steerage passengers. In 1857 and 1861 respectively, South Australia and New South Wales also passed legislation limiting arrival options, and in 1859 Victoria amended its Act with a punitive £40 entrance fee for Chinese who arrived other than by sea. In the seven years to 1863, some 16,500 Chinese people made the trek overland, as represented in Emmerichs’ The Celestials Trek. The discrimination faced by the miners on the goldfields was widely documented. Almost all Chinese arrivals were men, without wives or families, which further fuelled hostilities amid accusations of heathen hordes promoting paganism and immorality, with accompanying threats to white women, and by inference to the fabric of colonial society. Many Chinese did, however, settle in the gold towns in other roles as active community members, and more than a few enjoyed prosperous inter-racial marriages. The story of one Chinese immigrant miner and his English-born wife inspired the third of Bern Emmerich’s works, New gold mountain Xin Jin Shan (2020). This tableau features the gold town of Creswick and vignettes from the life of Henry ‘Hannie’ or ‘Hanny’ and Frances ‘Fanny’ Kay in Creswick in the 1860s. Henry A H Kay was born in Penang in either 1828 or 1837. By 1860 he was mining in Creswick and applied to be Chinese court interpreter there, as ‘a half caste who speaks Malay as well as several Chinese dialects’. He was eventually successful, and he is noted in contemporary court reporting in the newspapers in the 1860s. On 7 May 1864, Hannie married Frances ‘Fanny’ Cooper (born 1841 in Surrey, England) at Ballarat. They had a large family and together ran a number of businesses around the gold mining township north of Ballarat. Hannie, Fanny and other business owners became community advocates, petitioning to improve living conditions. The names of one or both of them appear on all four petitions presented by local Chinese residents to the Creswick Borough Council for water supply, drainage, footpath or access services between 1867 and 1873.1 The petitions show that Chinese residents were willing and able to take part in the processes of local government. Emmerichs’ tableau New Gold Mountain Xin Jin Shan features the Chinese characters, transliterated names and several European names from the first petition of 30 April 1867. Immigration restriction and hostility towards the Chinese led to both Chinese resistance and a cavalcade of restrictive immigration policies, culminating in the new Commonwealth government’s Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. In May 2017, the Chinese community marked the origin of this anti-Chinese legislation, and the 160th anniversary of its circumvention in the arrival of the Land of Cakes and the Celestial Trek. They re-enacted the walk from Robe to Ballarat and then to the Victorian Parliament, where Premier Daniel Andrews issued an apology to descendants of those migrants and Chinese Victorians, describing the policy as ‘a shameful injustice’. Bern Emmerichs’ tableau series was sparked by a meeting with a descendant of Hannie and Fanny Kay. The artist, long excited by colonial and pre-contact histories, could not resist this compelling story of an inter-racial couple and community advocacy amid the tumultuous gold rush. Each of these works on porcelain is painted deftly in small sections because the ceramic paint dries quickly. It is slowly fired to 850 degrees, then just as slowly cooled. The process is repeated a number of times as layers are applied. Emmerichs mixes the colours with a medium such as gum Arabic or water to yield various consistencies that heighten or deepen colour or add viscosity. These imaginary views based on historical sources provide a very accessible entry point to consider the import of these events and to reflect on their place in the history of Chinese immigration and government policy in Australia.

1 Denny E, ‘Mud, sludge and town water: Civic action in Creswick’s Chinatown’ (2012) Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 11.

Daina Fletcher is the museum’s Head of Acquisitions Development.