Lost Histories: Chinese-European Families of central Western New South Wales, 1850-80

From 1848, large numbers of Chinese men began to arrive incentral-western New South Wales (NSW), firstly as indenturedlabourers, then in response to the discovery of gold. Most cameon the understanding that they would send money home to theirfamily lineage, return at intervals to father children with their Chinese wives and eventually, having become wealthy, return permanently to China. Instead, some formed long-term relationships with European women. They, and their families, are the subject of this paper. Bureaucratic records have been used to reconstruct families of Chinese-European couples, with two major objectives. The first is to seek life history factors that might have inclined the women to take Chinese partners, and the second, to investigate whether the ubiquitous derogatory descriptions of the women are supported by evidence.