Pig Oven, Wellington

Pig oven built by market gardener Say Joe Sing Lee around 1913.

Pig oven built by market gardener Say Joe Sing Lee around 1913.

Image Courtesy of: Juanita Kwok

"In 2017, retired market gardener Tin Sing Lee showed Barry McGowan and I a pig oven on his land in Percy Street, Wellington near the Wellington Cemetery on the Bell river flats. Wellington, not far from Stuart Town, was a major market gardening centre with a significant Chinese community.

According to Sing Lee, the oven was built by his father, market gardener Say Joe Sing Lee, around 1913, when Say Joe and his brothers Tommy Pong, Ah See and Charlie Sing bought the land. Sing Lee’s account of how the pig was prepared and cooked using the oven, is described in detail by Malcolm Oakes.

Sing Lee told me that he saw the oven used twice a year. According to Sing Lee, after the pig was roasted and taken to the cemetery it was offered to ancestors, then male members were allocated portions of the pig. At the time Sing Lee witnessed the pig oven’s use, storekeeper and market gardener Bill Mow Funn organised the ceremonies while Ah Yook (surname Jung) did the cooking.

The pig oven has not been used for decades and has since been used as a dump for old farm equipment. It now appears as a mound covered in brick and metal debris, and was damaged by flooding in 2022. From the top of the mound one can still look down at the opening at the top of the oven and see the brick-lined oven cavity.

Juanita Kwok, A reassessment of Chinese pig ovens in Australia, Journal of Australasian Mining History, Vol. 21, October 2023, p.105.