The project I have submitted to meet course requirements and as part of my work with the Quarantine Station at North Head takes the form of three story sheets designed to provide further information on specific inscriptions as part of the tours the station offers for the public and for special interest groups. I have also written up a research guide for anyone wishing to look into the inscriptions I have chosen to focus on, but the guide also includes some general research into some of the experiences a typical immigrant from China might have experienced at the Station and in Australia. Lastly, I will be speaking about three inscriptions (of which I wrote story sheets for) as part of a tour Peter Hobbins is leading for the Chinese Australia Historical Society (CAHS) on November 21st.

My main argument for this project is that despite the limited information we are able to gather about the people who left inscriptions, especially Chinese inscriptions on the rocks and on the walls of North Head’s Quarantine Station, they remain an important part of Australia’s history. Their presence at North Head challenges a popular misconception held by many, which is that during the White Australia Policy, Australia’s borders were impermeable for Asiatics. However, it is clear in archival records and on the rocks of North Head that isn’t the case. And so the point I hope to advance and make more accessible to the public is that the development of Australia as a nation, despite the enacting of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, was not exclusively white.

The evidence I have used for my project is outlined in the research guide I wrote for the Quarantine Station. While I was unable to access the National Archives of Australia records, which had not been digitised, the presence or absence of available records is still informative. I also relied heavily on translations the Quarantine Project had commissioned. These were vital for me as I cannot read or write Chinese. I do recognise that because neither translation has been published, individuals not working directly with those involved in the Quarantine Project will be unable to access the translations.

A theme that I have attempted to develop in my project is that the Chinese who made their way to Australian soil were not motivated by the same things. Many of the Chinese who were detained at the Quarantine Station were seamen who had no interest in gaining entry to Australia, but rather, intended to return to their ship and continue to the next port on their journey around the Pacific. Others were motivated by social and political unrest back in China, and saw Australia as a new start, whilst others were simply here to return to their homes. Aside from a few notable historical Chinese-Australian individuals such as Quong Tart and William Ah Ket, it is easy to forget that the Chinese resided in Australia as naturalised individuals or under exemption certificates.

The research guide I put together for the station will be used by the curator of the museum and those interested in learning more about the inscriptions on site as a starting place in their research. The sources I included in the guide are by no means exhaustive, and I included sources that I thought were more widely useful in gaining contextual understanding around the inscriptions.

The work I did for the project is significant because it contributes to a small but growing amount of scholarship surrounding the presence of non-white individuals within or who had contact with Australia during the White Australia Policy. Much of the information I encountered on the topic is academic research, and even on the Q Station website itself it glosses over the non-English inscriptions and completely ignores the station’s use as an immigration detention centre altogether. Therefore, I think the story sheets I created for the tour guides to use will be an important and accessible means of learning about the Chinese presence at Q station. Furthermore, the story sheets are centred on events or facts, which may be of interest to the public, and therefore, the presence of the Chinese is presented in a novel way, rather than as a challenge against the legacy of White Australia.

Furthermore, the work I did was a valuable contribution because I examined a few inscriptions which have no been removed from the site and into storage. While this was done with the best intentions (the inscription was written on a working drain cover and was being damaged by people treading on it) the removal of the inscription essentially erases the story from the site and effectively from history.

As I mentioned above, the presentation of my research as story sheets grounded in interesting facts has affected the way in which I presented my research. I also had to ensure that the narrative I constructed was fairly simple and worked through oral transmission. The story sheets are not published on the Station’s website, but read only by staff on the site when giving tours due to possible issues with copyright infringement.

— REBECCA SUM