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Excavations at a Chinese fish curing site near Port Albert, Victoria.

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Abstract

From approximately 1850 to 1900, Chinese people played a crucial role in the development of Victoria's fishing industry. This research report uses evidence from the excavation of an 1860s Chinese fish curing site in Victoria's South Gippsland region to discuss the local colonial fishing industry and aspects of the Chinese involvement in it.

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Thousands of Chinese gold miners entering Victoria during the 1850s increased the demand for fish, a Chinese dietary staple. During this period, Chinese people entered Victoria's commercial fishing industry. They fished, bought fish and supplied fresh and cured fish (a cultural preference) to their fellow Chinese countrymen.

Chinese fish curers provided a new and reliable fish market in areas distant from Melbourne such as Corner Inlet, Port Albert and Metung (Figure 1). This in turn encouraged European fishing activity in regions previously regarded as unsuitable for commercial fishing.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

This research report stems from ongoing academic research examining aspects of the Chinese involvement in Victoria's early fishing industry, and discusses preliminary excavation results from an 1860s Chinese fish curing establishment near Port Albert, Victoria.

East Victoria's Fishing History

Commercial fishing in Victoria began soon after European settlement in the mid-1830s when fishing people built huts at Fisherman's Bend on the Yarra River and fish were sold at the general market reserve (Bennett 2002:3). By the 1860s, expanding demand led to the opening of very fertile fishing grounds in Gippsland's coastal region (Lee 2002:4).

As commercial fishing activities moved further from Melbourne, transport of fish to market before the flesh putrefied became the main obstacle for Victoria's rural fishing industry--ice was unavailable before approximately 1880.

Chinese Involvement

Written histories and newspaper reports from the mid-1850s reveal that Chinese fish curers were operating on a large scale not only in Victoria, but also in Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory (Sydney Morning Herald 1861; Newcastle Chronicle 1863; Jones 1990:35). Documentary evidence gives some insights into Chinese activities in Victoria's early fishing industry.

In 1861, H.W. Wheelwright, a naturalist touring Victoria, wrote:

... and if John Chinaman has benefited no one else in the colony, he had at least done some good the fishermen; for instead of being obliged now to run the fish to Melbourne, on every fishing station along the coast Chinamen are camped, who buy the fish from the boat ... Tons of fish are yearly sent up to the diggings for consumption by the Chinamen (1861: 248).

A writer for the Gippsland Standard on May 5th 1894 (described only as 'One Who Was There'), wrote:

About the year 1860, the first of the Chinamen curers started to cure fish ... they came to Port Albert and Port...

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