Back Roads on ABC and ABC iview S10E11 – These days the Victorian gold rush town of Beechworth is known for bushrangers, beer and bikes. But what’s less known is that in the 1850s, almost a quarter of the population of Beechworth were Chinese, attracted by the prospect of overnight riches.
In this episode of Back Roads, guest presenter Annie Louey goes in search of Beechworth’s hidden Chinese history.
Visiting in the week of the Beechworth Art Biennale, Annie meets the locals who are working to keep the Chinese history alive. After a vigorous training session with the Beechworth Golden Serpents dragon boat racing team, Annie heads to the Beechworth Cemetery to meet direct descendant Kathyrn Chivers at the original Chinese Ceremonial Burning towers.
Many of the locals’ houses were built on the old Chinese camps, like Vivienne McWaters who has spent a lifetime digging up what was left behind.
Vivienne tells of the horrors of racism directed at Chinese people during the gold rush and shows Annie her extensive collection of historic finds, including a 19th century erotica.
Darren Sutton left a corporate job in Melbourne 20 years ago to hunt full time for gold and gemstones in Beechworth, and Annie tries her luck on the site of one of the biggest finds of the goldrush, where thousands of Chinese miners would have toiled.
To get to the bottom of race relations back then, Annie ventures further afield, to visit the site in the Buckland Valley where tensions boiled over in the 1857 riot, when Europeans drove the Chinese miners out of the valley.
Production credit: Executive Producer, Brigid Donovan
Back Roads on ABC and ABC iview – Tuesday 29 October, 2024 at 8.00pm
TV Central ABC content HERE
Back Roads on ABC and ABC iview S10E11
