Chinese Gardens - The Remedy for Land Scurvy

From the 1850s, Chinese labourers were contracted to work in the pastoral industry as shepherds, hutkeepers, shearers, and cooks. 

Many soon put their gardening skills to work supplying fresh vegetables and fruit. Within a few years most towns of any size boasted at least one Chinese garden. 

The Chinese gardeners established their plots close to a water source, whether a river, creek, or permanent waterhole.

Chinese Garden & Hut
(State Library of South Australia)

For many communities, these gardens were the only substantial source of quality fresh produce. Chinese producers soon came to dominate the vegetable markets.

Rockhampton has its market reserve, but, like that in Brisbane, it is not much used, as the vegetable market is almost entirely supplied by the Chinese gardeners, some of whom adhere to their native custom of carrying everything slung on bamboos, or, if wealthy enough, employ carts.

Their gardens are well worth a visit, for even after the long drought, which only terminated a few days after my arrival, they were one mass of green, and were producing vegetables equal to any grown in localities more kindly favoured by nature and climate.[1]

Chinese Gardener
(National Museum of Australia)

Some European settlers were impressed with the ability of the Chinese gardeners to create such productive small plots and studied their techniques.

Those who may be interested in the matter of growing vegetables could not do better than pay a visit to the Chinese garden, on Mr C. Lawson's property. The garden has been worked for some time, and hence the whole system of management is now apparent. At present the attention of the Celestials is specially directed to the growing of lettuce, onions, and radishes, and the luxuriant manner in which they are flourishing speaks volumes for the mode of treatment.

The system they adopt is to grow vegetables in extremely narrow beds, just sufficient to carry two rows. The ground is kept scrupulously clean, and morning and morning and evening the plants are carefully trimmed of all dead leaves, and a small quantity of liquid manure is deposited at the root of each plant.

The manure used is chiefly that obtained from pigstyes, and being carefully stacked, until it presents the appearance of a dry compost, it is soaked in water and carefully strained; all the insoluble particles are then thrown away, and the liquid only applied to the plant. Onions are treated similarly, and, in fact, more as exotics than vegetables.[2]

Chinese gardener at work
(State Library of Queensland)

The health benefits of fresh produce were quickly recognised especially to those suffering from “land scurvy”.

Usually associated with sailors on long sea voyages, scurvy, a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, was also widespread among isolated rural workers such as shepherds and hutkeepers. These bushmen existed on basic rations of meat, flour, tea, and sugar.

One newspaper correspondent recommended that pastoralists consider employing Chinese gardeners.

WE have frequently felt it our duty to direct public attention to the miserable existence that too many shepherds and hut keepers are forced to endure.

If there was no other call for change than the terrible scourge of land scurvy from which nearly all bushmen more or less suffer, this in itself would be sufficient to show reason for an alteration in the present system.

This idea of employing a Chinaman to raise vegetables is novel, and deserves more than a passing consideration. The wonderful results obtained by the small party of Chinamen in Deniliquin prove beyond a doubt tho possibility of vegetables being raised in even the hottest weather.

Throughout last summer their garden was a perfect oasis in the desert. The fresh green patch where they grew their produce formed a wonderful contrast to the surrounding brazen herbage, and only showed what can be done by knowledge and perseverance.

The Celestials have produced their luxuriant crops by enriching a poor soil with sheep-dung and stable manure, and on all stations could be found a site for a garden with more natural advantages than that possessed by the one above described, when the Chinamen first leased the ground.[3]

Chinese Gardener & Cauliflower
(State Library of NSW)

The occupation of a Chinese gardener was not without its dangers, particularly on the goldfields. One particularly perilous experience was suffered by the Chinese at Crocodile Creek in 1867. This goldfield was south-west of Rockhampton and was the scene of a violent anti-Chinese riot. One eyewitness described the scene.

A row between the Europeans and Chinese took place between half-post two and three o'clock; he [eyewitness] was at work in his claim when he heard a great noise and came up to see what it was; he saw the Europeans chasing the Chinamen before them, and throwing stones at them; it occurred at the spot known as the Chinaman's garden.

He saw them treat the Chinamen cruelly by throwing stones at them; he interfered telling them that they should not do so; he made one man drop a stone and the mob threatened to stone him;

He at this time saw Stone amongst the mob; after he left the mob he went into the Chinaman's garden; the mob had opened out into two parties, one party went towards Chinese-street which he might say was exclusively occupied by Chinese and the other part, upon whom he kept his eyes remained at the garden, and also went down the Creek; the mob at the garden set fire to the canvas and calico tents, thatched with bush hay, belonging to the Chinese; the tents were burned.

The mob were crying out "chase the bastards off, roll up, come out, burnt the damned place down”.

Six men were later put on trial at Rockhampton. Two were acquitted and four sentenced to 9 months in the Brisbane gaol.

Chinese gardeners on their plot.
(State Library of South Australia)

Despite occasional harassment the Chinese gardeners continued to ply their trade well into the 20^th century.

Chinese garden with water lift, Gympie region ca. 1902
(State Library of Queensland)

© K. C. Sbeghen, 2014.

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[1] The Brisbane Courier Monday 14 January 1867

[2] The Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser Thursday 21 June 1866

[3] Rockhampton Bulletin and Central Queensland Advertiser Thursday 31 August 1865

Scum and Refuse on the Southern Ocean

Idealised Deck Scene on an Immigrant Ship
The Graphic (London, England), May 6, 1871

My opinion is that the inhabitants of Queensland would better consult the ultimate interests of their country by putting up for a time with a limited supply of carefully selected immigrants than by having it cursed and polluted by the introduction, under whatever guise, of the scum and refuse of the town populations of Great Britain.

THOMAS HARLIN, M.A., F.G.S.[1], &c., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge.[2]

Thomas Harlin ca. 1870
State Library of Queensland

In 1866 a recently arrived Englishman felt impelled to write a long letter to the Brisbane Courier questioning the quality of immigrants being recruited in Britain to sail to Queensland.

Thomas Harlin had sailed on the ship Southern Ocean for Moreton Bay. On board was a large number of assisted and free passage emigrants intended for public works in the Colony, chiefly to work on the railway being constructed from Ipswich to the Darling Downs.

Harlin and many other paying passengers soon noticed that, among the labourers, a group of men that seemed grossly unqualified for the jobs for which they were recruited. Harlin described them thus:

It was quite unnecessary for me to look twice at the men, two hundred and fifty or thereabouts in number, consigned to Queensland as "railway artisans," in order to feel satisfied that a considerable proportion of them had been drawn from the loafing, and not from the working, population of Great Britain. [3]

Henry Jordan 1887
State Library of Queensland

Several years previous, in 1861, Henry Jordan had been appointed as Emigration Commissioner for the Colony of Queensland. On a summer’s evening, Jordan addressed a rowdy public meeting in Brisbane. The whole immigration issue had long been a political hot potato. Jordan described the situation which existed in the past, when emigrants were chosen by British Commissioners.

Two ideas seemed to have possessed the minds of the Commissioners; the first was - that the poorest, idlest, and most worthless - those who were no use at home, and whom they were very glad to get rid of, would do very well to send out here; and secondly, - they appeared to think that the whole of our land fund would be properly disposed of in sweeping England of her useless population.

The very poorest, the most degraded, the most worthless, men of no value, either to their employers or to themselves, seemed to have been selected as being most in need of a change of air, as if their removal to a distant part of the globe would effect any transformation in such characters - make the lazy, hulking loafer an industrious, thrifty, and frugal man, or transform the miserable slattern into a clean and tidy housewife.

Now, however, these things were altered. The Imperial government has placed the money derived from the sale of lands into the hands of the colonists themselves, to do with it as they thought best, and it was not now deemed desirable to devote it to the purpose of relieving England of her worst paupers. [4]

No more of your rubbish!
Ipswich Punch April 1866

According to Harlin, the navvies recruited by Jordan were properly vetted and required to provide references. Simpson, another emigration agent, took it upon himself to make up the numbers before the ship sailed, by recruiting a large number of emigrants from the poorer areas of London. It is unclear what connection, if any, Simpson had to Jordan.

[It was] my belief that several of the chosen of Mr. Simpson had been loafers and lurchers[5] about the street corners of Whitechapel, Rotherhithe, Greenwich, and Deptford, well known, at all events in personal appearance, to the police of those districts, who had probably never taken kindly to regular work, and had certainly never been regularly employed as navvies.[6]

Henry Jordan’s time as the Emigration Commissioner was marred by controversy and he returned to Queensland in 1866.  He continued his parliamentary career into the 1880s & died in 1890.

His best efforts at bringing immigrants to Queensland were undone by the economic crisis in the late 1860s, which resulted in the unemployment suffered by many of the newcomers. A cartoon in the Ipswich Punch magazine nicely sums up the mood of the time.

Ipswich Punch April 1866

In 1869, Thomas Harlin was appointed as the first headmaster at the Brisbane Grammar School. In the 1870s he moved on to Melbourne Grammar School & died in Melbourne in 1913.

© K. C. Sbeghen, 2014.

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[1] Master of Arts, Fellow of the Geological Society.

[2] The Brisbane Courier Wednesday 6 June 1866

[3] The Brisbane Courier Wednesday 6 June 1866

[4] The Moreton Bay Courier Thursday 10 January 1861

[5] a petty thief, swindler, rogue

[6] The Brisbane Courier Wednesday 6 June 1866

Limestone - The Modern Athens

In those old days it was a town with some prestige, inhabited by capable clever men, "fine old English gentlemen," with the rare courtesies and manners of that race.[1]

Ipswich landing place November 24, 1851 (sketch by Conrad Martens)

The dynamic between the first towns in the free settlement of the Moreton Bay district, Brisbane and Ipswich, was prickly, to say the least.

In 1891, the “travelling reporter” for the Queenslander, an illustrated weekly, began a series of articles about Ipswich and its history, entitled “The Land of Coal and Corn”.  The relationship between the two settlements is frequently mentioned.

The Queenslander  17 October 1891

The explorer Cunningham had been the first to notice the “Limestone Hills”.

Writing to Governor Darling on the 16th December, 1828, Allan Cunningham, the explorer, made use of the following words:—

"It is therefore highly probable that upon the site of these limestone hills a town will one day be raised."

Some two months before the penning of the despatch which contained this sentence Cunningham had rested for awhile on the calcareous hummocks called the Limestone Hills, on the right bank of the Bremer River, and almost on the very spot where the Ipswich Girls' Grammar School now stands.[2]

Not long after the establishment of the convict settlement in Brisbane, an outstation was set up at the Limestone Hills to produce lime to be used in the mortar that held together the stones in the buildings constructed with convict labour.

The Commissariat Stores in Brisbane was built using this lime and still stands today.

Cunningham's Knoll and Hummock, postcard, Ipswich, 1912-1914
(Picture Ipswich)

At the end of the convict era, the outstation at the Limestone Hills became the township of Limestone. It did not retain its original name for too long because the Governor of the Colony of New South Wales was on his way.

Governor George Gipps (State Library of NSW)

In 1843 Governor Gipps visited Moreton Bay, and in company with Surveyor Warner, Surveyor Wade, Andrew Petrie, George Thorn, and others proceeded to Limestone in an open boat examining and surveying the river Bremer.

The Governor was struck with the place; a new township was speedily laid out, and duly and officially christened as Ipswich[3].

The first section of the town was at once marked out, including East-street and Bell-street, the former being the first street laid out and named in Ipswich. [4]

The change of name did not sit well with many of the original settlers.

It is questionable if Governor Gipps did well in changing the name of the place. Limestone is not an unmusical name, and it was at least suggestive of the formation of the surrounding country, while Ipswich has neither grace nor association nor anything else to recommend it. 

It may be truly said that the evil which men do lives after them.[5]

Ipswich was in a strategic position at the head of navigation of the Brisbane and Bremer Rivers, and with the rapid growth of the pastoral industry to the west became a busy river port.

The town also became the meeting place for the new wool barons and a rest and recreation centre for the up-country workers spending their pay cheques.

Brisbane Street, looking towards Limestone Hill, Ipswich, 1887
(Picture Ipswich)

While boom-town Ipswich became the squatter’s capital, Brisbane was considered down-market and still bearing the odour of the convict years.

It was the meeting place of all the sheep kings in the colony, and the old Club-house was the scene of many a midnight revel; it was the seat of learning, of politics, science, art, literature, and sport - the modern Athens.

Ipswich was then spoken of as the headquarters of the elite of Queensland and Brisbane a deserted outlying hamlet fit only to give a bandicoot the blues!

.  .  .

In those old days it was a town with some prestige, inhabited by capable clever men, "fine old English gentlemen," with the rare courtesies and manners of that race.

And how hard they fought to make Ipswich the capital of Queensland! [6]

When Queensland became a separate colony in 1859, Brisbane was named as the capital. This resulted in an animosity between the citizens of Brisbane and Ipswich that lasted well into the 20^th century.

Ipswich Punch cartoon showing a review of the Ipswich Volunteers in 1866
(John Oxley Library, SLQ)

In 1866 some of the clever young men in Ipswich created the satirical magazine, “Ipswich Punch”. The publication was hand-written and illustrated with jokes, lampoons, and cartoons.

One very effective weapon which they used was the Ipswich Punch, published monthly at the School of Arts by members of the "Punch Club."

It was Brisbane, however, which was the butt of all jokes and a popular object for ridicule. 

Contempt was poured upon the metropolis in every way. We find a schoolmaster eliciting from an Ipswich pupil the following replies to his questions:-

"Where is Brisbane, and for what is it noted?

The situation of Brisbane has never been dearly ascertained owing to the shifting of the mud, and it is noted for sheep's heads, lollies, corner allotments, insolvents, stagnant sewers, and the ancient ruins of a bridge.

Where is the great city of Ipswich, and for what is it famed?

It is situated on the banks of a noble river 16ft. 5½in. broad, and deep in proportion.

It is a convenient distance from Woogaroo[7], where the inhabitants take it in turn to reside free of charge.

It is noted for loafers, light weights, lawyers, sharp practice, and tight lacing."[8]

As the French say, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”.[9]

© K. C. Sbeghen, 2013.

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[1] The Queenslander Saturday 14 November 1891

[2] The Queenslander Saturday 17 October 1891

[3] Named after Ipswich in Suffolk, England, one of the oldest towns in Britain. Interestingly the town's medieval name was 'Gippeswic', and hence the connection with Governor Gipps.

[4] The Queenslander Saturday 17 October 1891

[5] The Queenslander Saturday 17 October 1891

[6] The Queenslander Saturday 14 November 1891

[7] Now Goodna, the site of what was then called the Lunatic Asylum.

[8] The Queenslander Saturday 14 November 1891

[9] the more things change, the more they stay the same (French proverb)

Reluctant Shepherds

In 1842, the Northern Districts of the Colony of New South Wales (what is now South-east Queensland) was opened up to free settlement.  Before the advent of barbed wire[1] fencing, shepherds were in great demand to manage the burgeoning flocks of sheep run by the squatters.

Shepherd and his flock, hut and  fold in the background
(State Library of Queensland)

At the time there was no direct immigration into Moreton Bay from Europe. Labour had to be recruited from Sydney and incentives were provided in the form of free fare and a sign-on bonus.

Having landed in Brisbane, some of the recruits had second thoughts when they realised that it was an employee’s market and began to demand a better deal. This situation was reported in the Moreton Bay Courier.

Labour.-The steamer has brought thirty-six more labourers, most of whom have entered into engagements to proceed up the country. A few, however, have declined the remunerating offers made to them, and are now loitering about the town.

We are informed by a gentlemen, who wished to engage one of these men, that on questioning him respecting the kind of employment he sought, he stated that he wished to engage as hutkeeper, that his terms were £25 per annum, but he would not undertake to watch the sheep! Our informant thought this was rather cool, and, of course, declined to employ him under such conditions.

Many similar instances of men having the like crotchets in their heads, and refusing to bind themselves under agreement to become answerable for loss of property through neglect, have occurred. The stockholders should take a determined course, and refuse employment to such men, whose only object appears to be to obtain the largest remuneration for the least possible labour.

The wages paid to shepherds and hut- keepers in this district are higher than in any other part of the colony, and it might naturally be expected that their duties would be better performed here than elsewhere. Such, however, is not the case; there is a general complaint, as the records of the police-office will testify, of the slovenly manner in which the flocks are tended and watched by these well-paid individuals.

It is to be hoped that stringent measures will, in future, be adopted in order to correct the growing evil.[2]

A large mob of sheep at Barcaldine
(State Library of Queensland)

Some imported workers were poached by local tradespeople in Brisbane Town much to the outrage of the squatters.

LABOUR:-Twenty-six labourers arrived by the steamer on Thursday week last. They have since entered into engagements, at an advance, in many cases, of £ 1 per. annum, to proceed up the country. The present rate of wages for good shepherds may be quoted at £25, and for hutkeepers £22 per annum, with good rations.

Several of the squatters have lately complained that many of the men sent down by Mr. Graham have remained in the town, and entered into the service of some of the tradesmen, contrary to the stipulations made in Sydney with Mr. Graham. The men who were engaged in Sydney were required to produce written discharges from their late employers, which documents were forwarded to Mr. Connolly, at South Brisbane, who, at the present time, holds a great number, the persons to whom they belong   not having applied for them.

The tradesmen who have engaged these men are as much to be blamed as the parties who have hired with them; and they have, moreover, rendered themselves liable to heavy penalties; the former for having engaged the men without written discharges, and the latter for fraudulent conduct in procuring free passages from Sydney under false pretences. They stipulated to proceed into the bush, and as honest men, they should have fulfilled their contracts.

Mr. Graham, we believe, has done all in his power, consistently with the limited means at his command, to facilitate the introduction of labour into the district, and it is rather too bad that his efforts, and those of the squatters, should be thwarted by men who have never contributed one farthing to the labour fund, and who are in a position to import their own labour at their own expense, without resorting to such shabby and dishonourable means of obtaining it.[3]

Idealised bucolic scene with shepherd and his dog
(Conrad Martens)

Given the isolation and dangers of the shepherding life, it is not surprising that many were reluctant to take up life in the bush. There were many cases of shepherds and hut-keepers being attacked and killed by aborigines protecting their territory. Some of the hired labour preferred to linger in town and enjoy its attractions such as they were. Unfortunately they soon found themselves before the court.

BREACHES OF THE HIRED SERVANTS ACT.

On Tuesday, at the Police-office, Mr. Lawson, of the Boyne River, appeared before the Bench to prefer a complaint against John Tomkinson, for refusing to proceed to his station, after having hired as a shepherd, and received an advance of wages.

It appeared from Mr. Lawson's statement that the fellow had started on three different occasions with the intention of proceeding to Limestone, where Mr. Lawson's drays were loading, in order that he might accompany them to the station. Each time he returned to Brisbane with various excuses, and got drunk in the public houses, until Mr. Lawson's patience became exhausted, and he determined on making an example of him.

The Police Magistrate told the defendant that his behaviour had been excessively bad, and to convince him and others that they could not commit such offences with impunity, the Bench sentenced him to three months imprisonment with hard labour in the Sydney House of Correction.[4]

The shortage of labour would continue in the following years and prompt vigorous debate regarding possible alternatives such as the resumption of convict transportation and  the importation of cheap labour from China and India.

© K. C. Sbeghen, 2013.

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[1] Barbed wire would not come into use until the 1870s. (Wiki)

[2] The Moreton Bay Courier Saturday 15 August 1846

[3] The Moreton Bay Courier Saturday 19 September 1846

[4] The Moreton Bay Courier Saturday 2 January 1847