Sources

This website was created using a variety of sources.

The records that inspired its creation, and that have provided a wealth of reliable information, are North Sydney Council's property ledgers, Valuation and Rate Books, kept by Council in order to determine how much property owners could be charged for the services provided by local government.

North Sydney Council has a complete original set of these books from 1867 to 1940. Microform records exist for later years. The ledgers incidentally record the owners and occupants of properties, the size of the property and the nature of any buildings on the land. It is mainly from these books that the presence and location of Chinese people in North Sydney, plotted on the maps (Explore maps)and the property table below, has been determined.

These books can be viewed under supervision in the North Sydney Heritage Centre at Stanton Library, 234 Miller Street, North Sydney from 1-5pm Monday to Friday.

Research also used Sands Directory, Sydney's main almanac recording residential and commercial addresses from 1858 to 1933. There were sometimes discrepancies between Council's records and Sands Directory. Where both sources record a name and a location, the details in Council's archive have been given precedence. Where a name and location appears only in Sands Directory, that has been included. You can search Sands Directory at: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/495003

The National Library of Australia's Trove website, which allows keyword searching of Australian newspapers from 1803 through to the middle of the 20th century, is an important resource. You can access it at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/

The National Archives of Australia holds immigration records of Chinese people in Australia from the 19th century. Some of these have been digitised. They can be searched at: https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/search-people

The organisation Our Chinese Past, which collates and disseminates information on the Chinese experience in Australia, can be accessed at: https://ourchinesepast.org.au/

Property Tables

• Gardens and Houses

• Shops, Houses and Stores

 

Select Reading list

Brook, Jack, From Canton with Courage: Parramatta and Beyond, Chinese Arrivals, 1800-1900, Blacktown District Historical Society, 2010

Boileau, Joanna, Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand: Gardens of Prosperity, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017

Fitzgerald, Shirley, Red Tape Gold Scissors: the story of Sydney's Chinese, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 1996

Loy-Wilson, Sophie, ‘Rural Geographies and Chinese Empires: Chinese Shopkeepers and Shop Life in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, 2014

Rannard, Ian, The forgotten gardens: the story of the last market gardens in Willoughby and Northbridge, Parker Pattinson Publishing, Sydney, 2005

Rolls, Eric, Sojourners: the epic story of China's centuries-old relationship with Australia, QUP, Brisbane, 1992
  Citizens: Flowers and the Wide Sea, QUP, Brisbane, 1996

Tavan, Gwenda, The Long Slow Death of White Australia, Scribe, Carlton North, 2005

Yen, Mavis Gock, South Flows the Pearl: Chinese Australian Voices, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2022

Yong, CF, The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia, 1901-1921, Raphael Arts, Richmond, 1977