WLL: Ruins, Ghosts & Living Heritage - Croydon's Chinese Past

Ruins evoke ghostly imaginings, but what of the living? Dr Janis Hanley and Jan Richardson (PhD candidate) speak on the signage and audio tours developed to engage visitors in the lives of early Chinese inhabitants of Croydon in Queensland’s Gulf Country: their work, relationships and families. The weave of archival, genealogical and first-hand stories from descendants draw out the connections between European, non-European and Aboriginal people.

Apart from the Croydon Chinese Temple Site re-invigoration project, Janis and Jan have published a chapter, ‘The Chinese of Ekibin’, in the Annerley Stephens History

Group’s Memories of Stephens, published in 2021, and mapping the Chinese market gardens surrounding Croydon. Together they coordinate a Facebook group, Journeys into Queensland’s Chinese Past: https://www.facebook.com/QldChinesePast/ and a recently established website: https://qldchinesepast.wordpress.com

Janis’s field of research is critical heritage - disrupting historical narratives, and re-examining stories of place through field visits, first-hand accounts and archival research. Her current focus is on Aboriginal-Chinese relationships. Her doctoral research explored what heritage can do in terms of re/connecting people, raising community awareness, and examining living heritage. It examined Queensland’s woollen textile industry: Her research on the Chinese diaspora has included the early Chinese immigrants of Croydon, and Southside Brisbane. Janis’s creative work encompasses community exhibitions, digital storytelling, audio trails, and interpretive signage. Publications include ‘Drawing spatial memories to life: mapping a Queensland heritage-listed woollen mill’, Australian Geographer, 54(1), 2023; “Worth-Less: Pay Discrimination in a Twentieth Century Female Industry in Queensland, Queensland Labour History Journal, 2024. Two Croydon audio published can be viewed online at: https://voicemap.me/tour/croydon-queensland/croydon-chinese-temple-site and https://voicemap.me/tour/croydon-queensland/life-in-the-bing-chew-house-an-audio-tour-walkthrough

Jan Richardson is a PhD candidate at Griffith University investigating the presence of non-European convicts and indentured labourers (‘coolies’) in Queensland prior to 1860, including ethnic minority individuals of African, Mauritian, Caribbean, Indian, Chinese and Pacific Island descent. She also contributes to Griffith University’s Harry Gentle Resource Centre Dictionary of Biography. Jan’s publications include ‘“Other” black peoples: Rethinking race and settler colonialism in Australia’s northern tropic’ in Settler Colonial Studies (online, 4 Mar 2025) and ‘Out of sight, out of mind: Ex-convict female paupers incarcerated in Queensland's benevolent asylums’ in the Journal of Australian Colonial History (Vol. 24, 2022).

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Host or Publisher The Royal Historical Society of Queensland