Those Tenacious Chinese

“Above the Turon River in the Great Dividing Range, Australia, a alone Chinese grave looks down on long abandoned gold diggings. Locals in the Sofala public house will state you the old marketplace nurseryman used to rinse and clean the castanets of chap diggers who had died, fill up them with gold and direct them back. When his time came, there was cipher to direct him home.” Quotation Mark from: ‘Damien Murphy’.

Did anyone see the television programme on the worlds first trans continental railroad built in the United States in the 1860’s? Just as well shiploads of Chinese, fleeing from persecution, turned up on the Occident seashore at the right time, or the 1 ft per twenty-four hours advancement across some of the peak mounts in America, would never have got been achieved.

Australia have its ain narratives of those astonishing Chinese. Historian Janis Wilton commented that the Sofala grave exemplifies the solitariness of the Chinese life in an adopted civilization that never really recognized them as Australian sons. "On one manus the Chinese were seen as a baleful threat, on the other, they were an alien presence, often forced to dwell a secret existence, the silence of which goes on to resound down the coevals to their present-day descendants," she says

"But these people today have got the narratives of those work force and women who came to Commonwealth Of Australia for the first gold and Sn rushes. They were handed down by word-of-mouth, and remind the remainder of us of the part they made to our society”

Dennis Sue-Fong’s grandfather, George, (his new Australian name) at the age of 13 came ashore at Cooktown in the late 1870s.

Those early Chinese adventurers were tough people. George, along with many other Chinese immigrants, eagerly trekked on ft to the Palmer River gold Fields to happen his fortune but like so many luckless 1s this was not to be and so disappointed but not without hope he again traveled on ft all the manner South to Sydney where he labored a piece for just keep, before returning North some old age later to the little Sn excavation town of Emmerville.

His traveling was no mean value deed when you see that the place was full of serpents and man-eating crocodiles along with a batch of narrow minded Englishmen who pulled his hog narrative and called him names. A batch of the old Chinese used to engage themselves out as cooks in the sheering camps. Some of them married the locals and the resulting combination of Chinese and Aborigine blood, called ‘yella fellas’ produced some of the best horsemen of the northern territory.

Dennis’ ascendants eventually shifted to a place called Inverell on the North western inclines of the Great Dividing Scope in New South Wales. It was here that Dennis’ other grandfather started a assortment shop called Hong Yuen & Carbon Dioxide which eventually became so feasible that it was one of the biggest in town. As a big full general shop it could practically supply anything you desired. As a recognition to the family’s concern acumen, in 2006 the shop is still operational; Dennis’ female parent had been a shareholder while his male parent shared in management.

His father, Ernest, also operated a big sapphire mine from where Dennis learnt about sapphires. Occasionally working with his Uncle who had started a wholesale Jewelry concern he became quite familiar with the industry. It was at this point that I came in contact with him and introduced him to the opal industry. We are both still involved in that industry today. www.opalmine.com is a site that characteristics the stones we cover in.

Dennis was dealing in sapphires and sapphire Jewelry when I first met him. He had established his ain wholesale concern but was struggling with falling sapphire demand. I suggested that opals were a much more than appealing proposition to acquire into because of the increasing tourist trade with Japanese Islands and the USA. That was back in the late 80’s. We have got been associated in the opal concern ever since. In the mid 1990s Iodine personally saw the great potentiality of the cyberspace and quickly established the internationally known http://www.opalmine.com with its encyclopaedia of opal and a confabulate forum with parts from all over the worl

In early 2005 Dennis was about to ship on another of our opal merchandising trips around Commonwealth Of Australia when his dear married woman Debbie became seriously sick with cancer. We are all hoping she will acquire well soon. - Simon Peter Brusaschi