Between the late 1870s and the early 1900s, ‘‘Canton'' village at Round Hill, near Orepuki, was the most southerly Chinese settlement in the world. A major museum display at Riverton aims to put this important part of Western Southland's history back on the map, writes Allison Beckham.
Dave Asher strides through the Te Hikoi Southern Journey museum.
‘‘You'll go through a piece of bush and there will be two Chinese working with the big rock walls. Then you will come through the forest, straight down into Canton,'' he says, indicating left and right.
‘‘On this side will be the basic hotel - the first hotel, not the second one - then we are going to build two or three little houses.''
His enthusiasm is plain. The museum already has an area devoted to Round Hill with static displays and interpretation boards, but Asher, president of the Riverton Heritage Society, wants more.
His plans include eight mannequins and the sort of life-like ‘‘frozen in time'' tableaux which already dot the award-winning museum.
One will depict a story Asher was told by an old-timer, about a Chinese man who came up with a novel way of avoiding arrest for gambling.
‘‘One day the Chinese got the word the policeman was arriving so this man swept everything off the table and put it in a bag. There was a cat sitting beside the fire so he put the cat in on top.
‘‘He was heading out the door when the policeman said, ‘where are you going?'. ‘Me go drown cat', he said. We are going to re-enact that with the policeman and the Chinese man and the cat with its head sticking out of the bag.
‘‘We want to show the Chinese mining in the forest, too. That was the unusual part of it. They used water in the rice paddies at home and they knew all about how to use water. They had wee ponds in the bush and they could open small gates and the water would run down into the area where they were working.''
A third tableau will show Riverton Mayor Theophilus Daniel and his wife in their living room in 1881 discussing plans for a public meeting to discuss ‘‘the Chinese question'' - that is, how to stop Chinese from settling in the area.
The first Chinese in Western Southland came to the Orepuki gold diggings from Central Otago in the mid-1870s, Asher says.
But racism drove them out, so they moved a few kilometres away to Round Hill. The arrival of the Round Hill Mining Company and other large players from the late 1880s signalled the end for the Chinese, who usually worked in groups of two or three.
‘‘After the big mining companies numbers began to drop,'' heritage society archivist Catherine Hill says.
‘‘Some stayed on to help build the railways and to lay the big water races for the European companies, but most drifted away.''
By the 1930s there were none left, Asher says.
‘‘They were ripped off. The agreement was they would work on the races and get water when they were finished, but that did no happen. They were just cut off, and that's why they all disappeared.''
The Chinese called Round Hill ‘‘Long Hilly''.
At its peak, there were 123 miners' houses in the ‘‘Canton'' village and dotted through the surrounding bush, as well as the ‘‘Peaceful Tower'' tea shop - later an hotel - a gambling house, an opium house, a joss house (temple) and another hotel run by Richard O'Brien.
The Presbyterians also built a church for The Rev Alexander Don's Chinese Mission work.
A rough path, later widened for vehicles, linked the village with Orepuki and Colac Bay, and to Riverton where the miners did their shopping and sold their gold.
All the Chinese at Round Hill were men, although some married or lived with European women. Hill has so far uncovered only three birth notices for the children of legally married mixed-race parents - Robin Mee Chang, born at Round Hill in 1882, (parents Wong Mee Chang, gold miner and Jane, nee Purdon) William Henry Chin born at Round Hill in 1884 (parents Chin Dang, gold miner and Ellen, nee Brown), and William James born at Round in Hill in 1902 (parents James Ly King, boarding house keeper and Ellen Margaret, nee Johnston).
Across the third entry is written ‘‘cancelled'', which intrigues Hill, who has been unable to discover what the wording means.
The new Chinese display will require a museum expansion and an injection of more than $500,000, which Asher says had not been secured yet, although work on that was under way.‘‘This is more than a dream.
The drawings have been completed . . . and we have assistance from [tourism agency] Venture Southland.''
Nigel Ogle, the creator of one of New Zealand's finest private museums, Tawhiti Museum, in Taranaki, helped Te Hikoi with its original concept and tableaux and has also been a mentor for the Chinese display, Asher says.
The aim of the expansion was to attract more visitors, including Chinese, and improve the museum.
‘‘Nigel says you've got to have a reason to come to a museum; a museum has got to have a wow factor and it's got to have a point of difference. The Chinese [history] has all those three.''
A floral reminder
No traces of ‘‘Canton'' village remain today, but Chinese lilies still flower annually in the area.
There are two walking tracks, the Long Hilly (Round Hill) walking track and the Ports water race route.
Both leave the car park on Round Hill Rd, about 1km from State Highway 99, between Riverton and Orepuki.
The Long Hilly track passes through regenerating native bush, the gravelled loop track leading past a tramway cutting and stone walls built by the Chinese miners to old earth dams. Allow 2 hours 15 min return.
The Port's water race route follows the path of a water race cut through heavy bush by Chinese miners in 1888-89. It provided water for alluvial mining at Round Hill for more than 60 years.
At the south end, the track can be accessed from the Long Hilly track and climbs to Cascade Rd. Allow 8-9 hours to Cascade Rd return.
From Cascade Rd experienced trampers can continue on the Longwood Forest Track via the Martin's water race route.
To complete the Longwood Forest Track allow 2-3 days from the Round Hill car park to the junction of Otautau-Tuatapere and Merrivale Rds, on the north side of the Longwood Forest Conservation Area.
● For more information, visit http://www.teararoa.org.nz
