Projects

Current project

In memory of Henry Chan (1937 -2008) – Founder and President, Chinese-Australian Historical Society; Committee Member, Chinese-Australian Cultural Heritage Project in New South Wales (CACH-NSW).

The Tweed River Regional Museum and NSW Migration Heritage Centre's recent project, Moving to the Tweed and its publication The Other Side of the World focused on migration to the Tweed from the 1940s to the 1960s. Most Chinese migrants did not arrive in the Tweed within this period.

Tracking The Dragon - Chinese-Australian Heritage, Tweed River is a new Tweed River Regional Museum and NSW Migration Heritage Centre project partnership to be researched in association with CACH (NSW). It was brokered by the late Henry Chan with typical energy and enthusiasm in March 2008. The project will complement Moving to the Tweed by recording oral history interviews (both sound and film) with Chinese people who arrived in the Tweed Valley prior to the Second World War (including members of the Tong family who established Tong's grocery store in Murwillumbah in 1935) and also with Chinese people who have arrived more recently.

The northern rivers region has a rich Chinese heritage and research to date indicates that there are numerous Chinese heritage sites. In the Tweed area there are market gardens in Murwillumbah; a dam associated with market gardens at the foot of the Burringbar Range; and stone terraces, drystone walls and wells associated with Chinese owned banana plantations at Chinaman’s Hill in the neighbouring Brunswick River valley. The project will including documenting the history of these places.

It aims to:
• Conduct oral history interviews with people of Chinese or Australian-born Chinese backgrounds in the Tweed Valley;
• Film interviews with people in addition to the oral history interviews;
• Identify and record photographs and objects relating to Chinese heritage held in private hands in the Tweed Valley;
• document three Chinese heritage sites;
• Produce a brief illustrated history of the Chinese people in the Tweed Valley, drawing together the whole project into a new Tweed River Regional Museum and NSW Migration Heritage Centre publication; and
• Provide heritage research and materials for use in future Tweed River Regional Museum exhibitions.

PROJECT CONTACT:

Sally Watterson, Senior Curator, Tweed River Regional Museum

Address:
Tweed Shire Council
PO Box 816
Murwillumbah NSW 2484

Tel: 02 66702440
Email: swatterson@tweed.nsw.gov.au

Web: www.tweed.nsw.gov.au/Museum