AN antique leather samurai suit stands darkly in a glass showcase at the Burke Museum in the northeast Victorian town of Beechworth, an unlikely link between two of its historic linchpins. Ned Kelly gang member Joe Byrne is thought to have seen it, leading to the much rougher metal suits the Kelly gang famously forged.
But the Japanese armour is an enduring relic of another highly coloured thread of Beechworth history: not Japanese but Chinese, the vibrant presence of a community often segregated but also central. The vest of linked leather lozenges -- like a handcrafted armadillo -- over dark-green silk stalked the streets in the Beechworth Carnival of 1874, an annual fiesta of costume and colour on foot and horseback, in which a culture spectacularly alien to the rough and ready European inhabitants was the focus.
The Australasian Sketcher reported the Chinese had ordered "dresses from China" costing more than pound stg. 1000. "It is very strange," it said, "to see the hearty interest which the Mongolians of the district take in arranging their share of the show." The 200-strong Chinese contingent, with an "order and coherency . . . not possessed by the heterogeneous elements [of] our own countrymen", made the Beechworth Carnival different from any other, and the "curiosities" in their booth "were something wonderful".
Seventeen years earlier, the Chinese community had raised funds to build the district's first hospital, the largest between Melbourne and Goulburn, open until 1940. Its granite facade and the remains of its grand gardens stand in Church Street, monuments to the earliest Chinese who walked here from South Australia, dumped by ships' captains to avoid Victoria's pound stg. 10 landing fee.
At the end of town, red cone-topped towers, where offerings were burned and fireworks frightened off evil spirits, mark the Chinese burial ground, original resting place of about 2000 residents. Half were later repatriated with their footstones to China. Ancestors are remembered at the annual Ching Ming festival celebrated here in early April.
In Beechworth's golden heyday, 7000 of its 30,000 residents were Chinese: miners, suppliers of food and entertainment, settled citizens. The Joss house, temple and shops of Chinatown, sadly only a memory, stood around Lower Stanley Road.
Just seven families of descendants remain. The Chinese Cultural Centre, open here until recently, is now closed, but the Burke Museum has parade banners, early Chinese coins, ceremonial weapons (imported, among a stash of Russo-Japanese war relics, with the samurai armour), and the temple's scarlet-painted end wall.
Along the road at Hotel Nicholas, proprietor Lorraine Lucas has a vast collection of early photographs, now papering the walls of the Gallery Dining Room. An intriguing parade photograph and engraving from 1874 evoke the splendour of the spectacle.
A walking tour leaves the museum daily (1.15pm-2.30pm) to explore social goldmining history, including Chinese sites. And the shire has a grant for a Gold Trail, launching early next year. Sites already accessible will be upgraded and set in a narrative context with a self-guide brochure.
Every Easter, the Golden Horseshoes Festival, led by a horse fitted with solid-gold shoes, features floats and street theatre, including Chinese music and a dragon dance (from Melbourne).
Ned Kelly's bullet-dented armour lives in the imagination and the golden horseshoes, brought out every year, evoke past glory; let's not forget the brilliant red-and-gold thread that was once a main artery in a rich town.
Checklist
Beechworth Golden Ticket (Visitor Centre, $25/$15, $50 family) gives two days' access to Burke Museum, Historic Precinct buildings and walking tours.
More: www.indigoshire.vic.gov.au.
www.beechworth.com/burkemus
www.beechworthonline.com.au
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