Gayndah
Date Published
:
: Town/small
: South (Qld)
: Amoy / Xiamen, shepherds
Gayndah was a centre of early sheep properties in southern Queensland (then NSW) and where many Chinese men travelled via Amoy and then Maryborough to work as shepherds. As early as 1851 it was declared that: "Almost every station in the two districts of Wide Bay and Burnett is supplied with Chinese or Coolie labourers, ..." The same writer also acknowledged that their "wages are so small they have nothing to lay out." href=""><em>
The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 April 1851, p.3.
However as their indentures were for five years only, once free to seek employment at more equitable rates many of these men remained in the area and often applied for naturalisation as British subjects to allow them to take up land. These included men such a Thomas Ashney who among other things was a Gayndah hotelkeeper.
This is a population that was added to by the arrival of people from the more southern Cantonese Pearl River Delta area so that by the late 1860s in a discussion about Police Magistrates in the Queensland Legislative Assembly it was declared that: "There was a large Chinese population settled at Gayndah, and they were bound to protect those people ..."
The Brisbane Courier, 15 January 1868, p.3.
See also:
Maxine Darnell, "Life and labour for indentured Chinese shepherds in New South Wales", 1847-55, JACH, pp.137-157.
Margaret Slocomb, Among Australia’s pioneers: Chinese indentured pastoral workers on the Northern Frontier 1848 to c.1880 (Balboa press, 2014)
Michael Williams, Too much like Englishmen: Amoy migrants in Australia, ChideStudyPress, 2026.
