From the goldfields to the gardens: the long history of Aboriginal-Chinese Australia

A landmark exhibition at the National Museum of Australia is documenting more than 170 years of connection between Chinese migrants and Aboriginal Australians, surfacing a chapter of national history long held inside families and rarely told in public.

Our Story: Aboriginal Chinese People in Australia draws together oral histories, archival records, family photographs and contemporary artworks to trace how Aboriginal and Chinese families came together in the wake of the 1850s gold rushes – and how those relationships built businesses, sustained communities and survived two parallel histories of colonial discrimination.

By 1901 about 30,000 Chinese people had arrived in Australia, the vast majority of them men. As the goldfields declined many remained, turning to small business and agriculture. Market gardens, established on the fringes of regional towns, became the meeting point.

Curator Zhou Xiaoping, a Melbourne-based artist who has worked with Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley since the late 1980s, said the gardens were where the two cultures first put down shared roots.

“Every family we interviewed talked about the gardens” Mr Zhou said.

Relationships between Chinese men and Aboriginal women were common through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with both communities pushed to the margins of White settler society and subjected to comparable forms of discrimination. Mr Zhou said shared experience drew the two groups together.

“At that time both groups were treated unfairly. Aboriginal and Chinese people were both discriminated against, so they came together. They lived in the same areas and found similarities in how they cared for families and children,” Mr Zhou said.

Children of those unions often faced prejudice on multiple fronts, and many family histories were kept quiet for generations. Stephen Loo, a Noongar man whose family history features in the exhibition, said the project had given families permission to reconnect with the half of themselves long held in silence.

“There had been so much silence. For my father and grandparents it was not spoken about. What this exhibition does is bring pride back. It reconnects us not just to family but also to the fact that our people were building businesses and sustaining communities” Mr Loo said.

The exhibition features works by seven artists of Aboriginal-Chinese heritage and one Chinese-Australian artist, including Vernon Ah Kee, Gordon Hookey, Lloyd Gawura Hornsby, Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and Karajarri artist Jenna Lee, Damien Shen, Christian Thompson, Jason Wing and Mr Zhou. The works span photography, glass, painting and installation, and explore identity, ancestry and the messy real-world business of building a multicultural country before there was a vocabulary for it.

Mr Zhou said the exhibition opens up new conversations long overdue.

“Today people are happy to say they are Aboriginal and also Chinese. In the past many hid that part of themselves, but now there is recognition,” he said.

The history also speaks to Australia’s contemporary economic relationship with China. China is now one of Australia’s major trading partners, with the relationship underpinned by exports of iron ore and gas, much of it from Western Australia. In the 2022-23 financial year about 85 per cent of Western Australia’s iron ore exports went to China, totalling around 753 million tonnes.

Our Story: Aboriginal Chinese People in Australia exhibited at the National Museum of Australia on Ngambri-Ngunnawal Country from 10 April 2025 to 27 January 2026, and was scheduled to tour to China before returning to Western Australia. The project was supported over five years by Fortescue along with government and community partners.

For Mr Loo, the project’s value will be measured in what gets passed on.

“Finding out I was of Chinese descent gave me a new sense of connection. This project makes it easier for all of us to share that knowledge and give it to our families. It is about putting something in place for future generations,” he said.