After the discovery of gold at Mount Alexander was made public in 1851, the population of Castlemaine and surrounding districts rose quickly. Among those flooding to the diggings were Chinese men arriving in Melbourne, and then Robe in South Australia after the imposition of the entry tax in 1855. By 1858 the Chinese population of Victoria had peaked at some 40,000. According to the Annual Mineral Statistics submitted by Secretary of Mines in his Quarterly Reports of Mining Surveyors and Registers, the population of Chinese in the Castlemaine district in that year attained 9727 and dropped steadily after 1865. By 1868 when our case was heard in the Castlemaine county court there were 3080 Chinese living there. ^[7]

These population data should not, however, be viewed as absolutely reliable. In 1868 The Rev. William Young submitted his ‘Report on the Conditions of the Chinese Population in Victoria’ to the Victorian parliament. Figures in that report on the major Chinese settlements in Victoria were obtained from different local informants. In the case of Castlemaine, ‘Statistics of Chinese Population, and particulars of their Employments, [were] furnished by the Chinese Interpreter James Ah Coy’. ^[8] Ah Coy’s report is most informative. At the level of absolute numbers he reports ‘over 80’ Chinese in the township itself, 50 at Mopoke, and ‘over 300 Chinese miners near Mopoke gully’, 150 miners at Barker’s Creek, 150 miners at Golden Point, 170 miners at Diamond Gully, and ‘In the vicinity of the township all around’, there were 100 miners, 20 who worked in gardens, 30 market gardeners, 300 who were married with wives in China, seven married to European women, 20 Chinese children, five Chinese naturalised, 25 in hospital, five lepers, and 400 Chinese prisoners in Castlemaine gaol. Ignoring Ah Coy’s endearingly idiosyncratic taxonomy (did any of those married have an occupation?), these numbers are still more than 1000 short of the 3080 souls. Nonetheless, the picture given here is of a community that had passed beyond the first flush of gold fever with the beginnings of a commercial economy. Ah Coy reports that in Castlemaine there were:

1 Chinese street in the township,

5 Chinese stores,

1 butcher’s shop,

1 eating-house,

5 opium shops,

5 gambling-houses,

2 barber’s shops,

4 fishmongers and

3 druggists’ shops.

In Ah Coy’s report there is no ‘joss-house’ in Castlemaine itself or any of the local villages or camps.

Could this really have been the case?