Quong Tart: Chinese Australian Who Played the Bagpipes

Quong Tart, born in 1850 in China, would become one of Sydney's most famous and beloved personalities and philanthropists.

His story in an interesting one. 

Born in 1850 in a small village of Guangdong province, China, Quong Tart came to Australia in 1859 with his uncle and other miners to the goldfields near Braidwood, NSW.

Quong Tart's uncle found Quong a job at the general store of Thomas Forsyth and his wife at Bell's Creek, some 20 kms from Braidwood, where he learned basic accounting and business practices.

The Forsyth's also taught Quong English, but with the Scottish accent in which they spoke.

Alice and Robert Percy Simpson, who owned land and mining claims in the area, then virtually adopted Quong, who would ride about on a horse with Mr Simpson. 

Quong continued his education with the Simpsons and became a devout member of the Anglican Church.

Robert Simpson gave Quong a land claim, and Quong found gold. 

By the time he was 18 Quong had built a house next to the Simpsons. (Quong employed 200 Chinese and Europeans)

Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), Saturday 18 April 1874,

Many Chinese came to Australia during this period, and the cheap and plentiful labour force incited public protests, which escalated into racist opposition. 

Quong, calm of character and fluent in Mandarin and English, was able to navigate European and Chinese ways.

Quong had the dress and manners of an English gentleman, and would preform Scottish songs on his bagpipe.

"Quong could sing Scotch songs, recite Burns

with the proper accent, play Scotch airs on the piano. 

He was naturalised in 1871, and was
the first Chinese to join an Oddfellows' Lodge in New South Wales.
Later he became a Forester and a Freemason."

Richmond River Express and Casino Kyogle Advertiser (NSW : 1904 - 1929), Tuesday 13 February 1912

In 1887, the Simpsons moved to Sydney, and they invited Quong to accompany them.

In 1881, Quong returned to China and set ups a tea trade to Sydney.

He then established a chain of silk stores and tea shops. 

Quong married an English school teacher, Margaret Scarlett, on 30 August 1886. The couple had two sons and four daughters, who were baptised in different denominations to avoid charges of prejudice.

Quong Tart and his wife Margaret Scarlett who was a teacher at Araluen., NSW

Quong Tart's Elite Hall in the Queen Victoria Market Building was formally opened by the Mayor of Sydney in 1898.

In 1889, Quong Tart opened a grand Tearoom with marble fountains and ponds with golden carp at 137 King Street, Sydney.

In December 1889, Quong Tart opened the Loong Shan Tea Giyse at 137 King Street, Sydney, NSW. It was his grandest Tea room, with marble fountains and ponds with golden carp.

Quong Tart's tea rooms were also located at 777 George St, in Moore Park Zoo, and the Haymarket theatre district.

Quong Tart and his family lived in a mansion called "Gallop House" in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield.

On 19 August 1902, Sydney was appalled when Quong Tart was bashed with an iron bar and robbed at his office in the Queen Victoria Building. Frederick Duggan was jailed for 12 years for the crime.

Quong Tart died from pleurisy 11 months later, on 26 July 1903, aged 53.

FUNERAL OF THE LATE QUONG TART, ASHFIELD, JULY 28, 1903, .Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), Wednesday 5 August 1903

Japanese Midget Submarines Entered Sydney Harbour

Five large Japanese submarines were positioned 56 kilometers north-east of Sydney Heads on 29 May 1942.

The Japanese sent a reconnaissance aircraft at 3.00 am the next day and reported "battleships and cruisers" moored in Sydney Harbour.

The next day, five submarines approached within 11 kilometres off Sydney Heads. About 4.30 pm, three midget submarines were released and approached Sydney Harbour.

Sydney outer-harbour defences detected the first midget submarine's entry at about 8.00 pm.

The midget submarine became entangled in an anti-torpedo net suspended between George's Head and Green Point.

Before HMAS Yarroma could open fire, the submarine's two crew activated demolition charges and scuttled their craft.

The second submarine entered Sydney Harbour at about 9.48 pm and headed west towards the Harbour Bridge.

The submarine was fired on by the heavy cruiser USS Chicago, about 200 metres from Garden Island.

The Japanese submarine fired two torpedoes at USS Chicago, with one torpedo going ashore at Garden Island but not exploding.

The unexploded torpedo at Garden Island several days after the attack, AWM

The other torpedo did not hit USS Chicago but instead, sank HMAS Kuttabul killing 21 sailors (19 Royal Australian Navy and 2 Royal Navy).

The wreck of HMAS Kuttabul sits in the waters of Sydney Harbour at Gardens Point after the attack, Sydney, NSW, 1942. AWM. (Kuttabul, a ferry was taken over by the Navy as a depot ship to accommodate sailors in transit to other postings)

The submarine escaped from the harbour, its mission complete.

HMAS Yandra sighted the third submarine at the entrance to the harbour and it was depth-charged (Most depth charges use high explosive charges and a fuse set to detonate the charge).

Four hours later, the submarine entered the harbour again and was depth-charged in Taylor Bay by the Royal Australian Navy. Both crew members killed themselves.

The two submarines recovered were identical, and their remains used to reconstruct a complete submarine.

A Japanese midget submarine which took part in the unsuccessful attack in Sydney Harbour on 31 May 1942 being raised from the bottom of Sydney Harbour, AUST, during a salvage operation. AWM

A week after the midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour, the two larger submarines returned and bombarded Sydney and Newcastle with their deck guns.  

One submarine shelled Newcastle for twenty minutes until driven off by fire from coastal artillery defenses at Fort Scratchley. Another submarine fired ten rounds into eastern Sydney.

A composite Japanese midget submarine (of HA-14 & HA-21 which came into Sydney Harbour during WWII) at Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Sept 67. Photo by my father.

Janette Asche

Visit the Australian War Memorial

The composite submarine was permanently located at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, ACT.

Australia Transforms from a Convict Colony

Edward Hargraves is credited with discovering the first payable goldfields in 1851 at Ophir near Bathurst, NSW. However, surveyor James McBrien had noticed gold particles by the Fish River east of Bathurst in 1823.

Edward Hargraves (October 7, 1816 – October 29, 1891) was famous for starting the Australian gold rush. in 1851

The Australian authorities were aware of gold being found but scared of rebellion, unrest and crime waves that may result from the convict population striking it rich.

After the Ophir gold finds, one of the biggest gold rushes in history occurred.

Between 1851 and 1861, about 500,000 people came to Australia from many places around the world, hoping to strike it rich.

Gold miners on minehead, Gulgong [?], New South Wales, ca. 1872, SLNSW

Australia was rapidly transformed from a convict colony to a place of growing industry, expanding population and increased wealth. Gold became Australia’s largest export.

For thousands of European migrants, the gold rush was a chance to break free of a rigid class system: the opportunity for economic prosperity and social mobility. Chinese prospectors mostly wished to find great wealth and return to China.

Simmons's miners' office, mining and law agent, public accountant and greengrocer (next to Chinese boarding house, Gulgong), American & Australasian Photographic Company

The Gold Rush had severe impacts on the lives of Aboriginal people. As Aboriginal people used stone tools and did not have an “iron age” or “bronze age”,  gold was useless to them.

For Aboriginal people, the physical environment was created and shaped by the actions of spiritual ancestors as they travelled across the landscape. Each person belonged to a territory and clan group and had spiritual connections and obligations to that country.

The hoards of men arriving from around the world, digging up the sacred lands, must have been distressing and confusing for Aboriginal people. 

However, some Aboriginal people became very successful during the various gold rushes. Kitty Pluto, born on Kandju country, discovered gold in 1915 on the land, which became the township on the Batavia Goldfield in the 1930s and was officially named Wenlock in 1938.

Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), Thursday 18 July 1940

For nearly two years Kitty was the
only women, black or white, on the
lonely goldfield, and she became some
thing of a local heroine because of the
way she worked on the claim. Almost
very day from daylight to dark she
toiled — wielding a pick and shovel

underground, turning the windlass for
lifting heavy buckets of ore from the
nine, and washing dirt.

Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), Thursday 18 July 1940

Kitty Pluto, photographed on or about the place where she picked up the first piece of gold which led to the development of the present workings at Lower Camp Batavla. Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld. : 1866 - 1939), Thursday 28 January 1932

Another Aboriginal, also with a planetary name, is Jupiter Mosman, who, as a 12 year old boy, was with a small group of prospectors, including Hugh Mosman, James Fraser, and George Clarke, when their horses bolted after a flash of lightning.

 Jupiter found both the horses and a nugget of gold in a creek as he searched for the horses.

Ten major gold reefs were eventually mined at the town that became Charters Towers in Far North Queensland.

The above photograph of the late JupiterMosman was taken only a few months prior to his death at Eventide Home, Charters Towers, in December. 1945. Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld. : 1874 - 1954), Thursday 18 February 1954

A top Australian Technology: WiFi

In the 1990s, there were no smart phones or other wireless devices. You had to connect your computer to actual wires. 

Many companies around the world had invented wireless technology, but the stumbling black was reverberation.

Reverberation is an echo that distorts the signal caused by radio waves bouncing around.

Australia's CSIRO invented and patented wireless LAN (WLAN) technology that allows wireless phones and computer devices.

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) chip developed by Australian radio-astronomer John O'Sullivan and his colleagues at CSIRO was one centimetre square, with 95,000 transistors.

However, CSIRO did not invent core elements of its wireless technology. They developed a solution to the "multipath problem" of interference to radio waves indoors. 

As Isaac Newton wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1675, “If I have seen further [than others] it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

The Opera House, the tourists & their selfies, the new buildings & the vibrant pace of a big city...SYDNEY, NSW. YAZMDG (19,900 images)

Ships were Giant Birds, Monsters or Floating Islands

In 1788, Aboriginal people of Botany Bay and Port Jackson saw a fleet of ships for the first time, and having no context to understand such a sight, thought the ships were giant birds, monsters or floating islands. (1.)

The men climbing the masts, were  thought to be devils or possums.

Lithograph of the First Fleet entering Port Jackson, 26 January 1788, by Edmund Le Bihan

However, within a a few years, Aboriginal people were accompanying the British on various voyages. 

"Young Bundle", an Aboriginal orphan boy from the Cowpastures area, accompanied William Hill of the NSW Corps to Norfolk Island on board the brig Supply on 22 March 1791. (Watkin Tench, Journal)

Thomas Chaseland, child of a convict and Aboriginal woman, was born about 1773, and travelled with about 20 whaling and sealing expeditions. 

Thomas is first mentioned in the crew list of the Jupiter (Captain Bunster), which left Sydney on August 6 1817, for Hobart, as "Thomas Chaseling, son of a settler at Windsor by a native woman" (Cumpston 1970:44).

Thomas married Puna, sister of a prominent Maori chief named Te Matenga Taiaroa.

In March 1801, "Yeranabie" (Yaranabee) and Worogan, an Aboriginal husband and wife, sailed with Lieutenant James Grant aboard the 60-ton sloop Lady Nelson.

During the 11-week voyage they visited Jervis Bay, 170 kilometres south of Sydney, and Westernport and Churchill Island in Port Phillip Bay, now Victoria.

Aboriginal man, Bungaree, joined the crew of HMS Reliance on a trip to Norfolk Island in 1798. He then accompanied Matthew Flinders and his brother, in 1798, on the sloop Norfolk, on a coastal survey as an interpreter, guide and negotiator with Aboriginal people.

Bungaree was recruited by Flinders on the first circumnavigation of Australia between 1801 and 1803, in the Investigator.

Bungaree by Augustus Earle (1826)

Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne, Aboriginal men of Port Jackson, accompanied Governor Arthur Philip to England in 1792, where, some reports claim, they presented to King George III. Bennelong spent two years in London. 

Yemmerrawanne and Bennelong stayed in London with Henry Waterhouse, an English naval officer. 

Yemmerrawanne died in Britain after a serious chest infection.

Bennelong, also unwell, was sent back to Sydney in February 1795 on HMS Reliance, the ship carrying surgeon George Bass to the colony. Bass nursed Bennelong back to health.