Mei Quong Tart outside his Sydney tea rooms. Photo: Tart McEvoy Papers, Society of Australian Genealogists.
History is dotted with anomalies – aberrations that make you look deeper into the past and question the broad brush that it’s often painted with. This story begins in Braidwood, a town that in the mid-19th century was flushed with gold fever that brought a wave of Chinese immigration. The subject of this story is one of the very few Chinese immigrants from this period that history noted, but before we get to his story, we need to look at the climate that he thrived in.
Let’s say the year is 1880; you’re a colonial politician in the burgeoning nation of Australia, not yet federated but marching away from its rough and rugged convict foundations. Your seat in Sydney puts you in an established and politically influential position, funding infrastructure and supporting free trade between the colonies.
It’s the tail end of the gold rush period, and while the frenzy has subsided and the industry is becoming regulated, the prospect of gold still attracts immigrants from China who often rework old diggings in cooperative groups looking for gold that others may have missed, and as you may have guessed, White Australia doesn’t like this.
Anti-Chinese sentiment wins votes, and you’re a politician, so that’s generally where your sentiment lies. As federation approaches, you tighten laws on Chinese immigration, supported by propaganda that paints a vile picture of the dangers of the “Mongolian Octopus”, and as the nation forms in 1901 with federation, you impose restrictions that effectively stamp out Chinese immigration altogether.
A shocking example of how the media portrayed Chinese immigration in the late 19th century and into the 20th century. Photo: Cartoon titled ‘The Mongolian Octopus’, The Bulletin, 21 August 1886. National Museum of Australia.
Yet despite all of this, despite the public and political climate, there is one man who stands out as a complete anomaly of the era and you, as a politician know him well, you even like him. His name is Mei Quong Tart, a Sydney-based Chinese-born businessman who came to Australia through the Braidwood goldfields when he was only nine years of age.
Referred to as Quong Tart with Mei being his surname in accordance with Chinese naming traditions, he arrived in Australia in 1859. His time on the goldfields should have been marked by violence and discrimination, a path he was spared when an Australian-Scottish family in the Braidwood region took him in, taught him English and educated him as they would their own children. Then, when almost a grown man, encouraged him to acquire shares in gold claims, a manoeuvre that saw him move into adulthood a wealthy man in his own right.
This upbringing indoctrinated him into the lifestyle of the upper-middle white classes, and even as a young man, he was popular with his peers and captain of his local cricket team.
He was also witty, charismatic and funny. Pair those attributes with a Scottish accent that he acquired from his guardians, a three-piece suit, wealth, a knack for public speaking and a head for business, and you have a man destined to break down all of society’s expectations, albeit the unfounded and unwarranted expectations placed upon Chinese immigrants that, if we are calling a spade a spade, are just plain old racism.
Quong Tart’s tea rooms were some of Sydney’s finest dining establishments. Photo: Original source unknown.
Opening a series of elegant tea rooms in the Sydney CBD, including the Loong Shan Tea Room, on Sydney’s King Street and Quong Tart’s Tea Rooms in the Queen Victoria Building, he entertained politicians and society’s best, carving a path for himself to go down in history as the Scottish gentleman with unlikely origins.
It wasn’t just his tea rooms that connected him to political circles. His anti-opium stance saw him lobbying political contacts for reform and giving public speeches on such topics. By all accounts he was an entertaining talker who won over large audiences, a skill that saw his public profile thrive.
Newspapers of the day stated that he was ‘unusually popular’, and his marriage to the English-born Margaret Scarlett in 1886, one that led to six children, was a rare example of an interracial marriage in Victorian Australia.
Despite his popularity, his existence in the classes he moved in was divisive, and his life ended in 1903 when he was unable to fully recover from a violent racially-motivated attack in his home by a man wielding an iron bar.
Quong Tart’s family in 1903 shortly before his death. Photo: Victorian Collections.net
His funeral, attended by judges, politicians and influential citizens, was a public occasion befitting a man of wealth and popularity, and despite future Prime Minister and close personal friend George Reid holding him up as an example of how race doesn’t denote a man’s character, it wasn’t enough to fight the tides of racism with the White Australia policy in full effect at the time of his death.
The story of Quong Tart is both happy and sad. He thrived in life when all odds were against him, but at the same time to do so, he had to assimilate to a culture that would not have accepted him if he had not adopted their ways.
It’s a life that when studied raises uncomfortable questions for many Australians, questions that are still sadly relevant today, and that’s worth taking a moment to think about while appreciating the boundaries he crossed to leave his legacy.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Mei Quong Tart and the goldrush era in Braidwood, head to the Braidwood Museum, 186 Wallace Street, Braidwood.
