Celebrating Avoca’s Chinese heritage

This month, February 2026, I have been blogging about the Chinese diggers of the Avoca district.

Tens of thousands of Chinese joined in the mid-nineteenth century rush for gold, but when it ran out most of them returned to Canton, and few traces remain of their sojourn here.

Among my sources have been court cases, inquests, naturalisation documents, cemetery records, and newspaper reports of achievements, disturbances, and misbehaviour. There was pageantry and colour too and, accompanied by remarkably little mutual suspicion and hostility, and a great amount of live and let live. 

A memorial at Avoca cemetery, where more than a hundred Chinese gold miners were buried, commemorates their determination and capacity for enterprise and hard work.

A formal garden with a pool and pagoda opened in 2014 on the riverbank near Avoca’s main street. It celebrates the district’s connection with its Chinese heritage.

Posts this month:

• Chinese in Avoca cemetery
• The Onthong / Tong/ Cook family
• Grantsvale, Fiddler’s Creek (Percydale)
• Chinese New Year 1870
• Ah Kin How Qua (1829-1873)
• 1855 evidence given by Howqua when examined by the Gold-Fields Commission
• 1867 survey of Chinese in Avoca
• The 1872 murder, or was it manslaughter, of Teang Kong
• Ah Tow (1821 -1888 ), Ah Tow (1838-1877), and Ah Tow (1847-1909)
• Memorial to the Chinese in the Avoca Cemetery
• The Avoca Chinese Garden
• A shortage of interpreters at Avoca
• The murder of Ga Poo by Ah Lop September 1857
• Chinese New Year at Avoca Lead 1865
• Tending to graves in Avoca
• Chinese coins found at Percydale
• 1860s, Chinese travelling by stage coach
• Ah Yen, sojourner
• Chinese miners on the Avoca goldfields
• Chinese pageant and speech at the opening of the Maryborough and Avoca Railway in 1876
• Mr Loo Chin of Percydale