Registration for Dragon Tails 2022 is now open.
Theme: Rural and Regional Histories
Location: Queen Victoria Museum at Inveresk, Launceston, Tasmania
Date: Thurs 10 – Mon 14 November 2022
Thursday - tours of Chinese heritage in Launceston
Friday to Sunday - conference proceedings
Monday - bus tour of Chinese tin mining and community heritage in NE Tasmania
Convenors: Juanita Kwok, Paul Macgregor
Following on from the success of the Dragon Tails conferences at Ballarat (2009), Melbourne (2011), Wollongong (2013), Cairns (2015), Bendigo (2017) and Wellington (2019) we will be holding, in Launceston, the seventh Dragon Tails, an Australasian conference on Chinese diaspora history and heritage.
This conference will be hosted by Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania.
This year’s conference theme highlights the fact that in the 19th & early 20th centuries, Chinese in Australasia were more a rural rather than a metropolitan population. This year’s conference papers will consider the historical experience of Chinese migrants in rural and regional Australia and New Zealand and how their networks connected regional and metropolitan places in Australasia and overseas.
Keynote speakers will be Helene Chung, and a joint presentation by Janis Wilton and Joe Eisenberg.
Helene Chung, the Hobart-born fourth-generation Chinese Australian journalist, will speak on “Two Unique Tasmanian Chinese: My father, Charles: fruit merchant, restaurateur and artist-in-retirement, 1920–2018; My mother, Dorothy: scarlet woman to fervent Catholic, 1925–2020”. Helene will explore the role of the Chungs and the Gin/Henry/Zhens from their 1880s Tasmanian tin-mining origins through their decades of non-communication followed by détente to today when, despite the influx of numerous other Chinese families, the five-generation Chungs and the six-generation Henrys around the world remain the predominant Chinese Tasmanians.
On This Day Tonight in 1974, Helene Chung became the first non-white reporter on Australian television and, as Beijing correspondent (1983-86), she was the ABC’s first female posted abroad. Helene is author of Shouting from China, Gentle John My Love My Loss, Lazy Man in China and Ching Chong China Girl.
Janis Wilton and Joe Eisenberg will jointly present “Unpicking Golden Threads”, a review of their project from the 1990s-2000s, Golden Threads: The Chinese in regional NSW. This project, initiated by the NSW Ministry for the Arts, documented items in local and regional museums in NSW that connected to the histories of Chinese-Australians and encouraged regional communities to explore and value their Chinese history and heritage and to share that heritage with the wider community. In their presentation, Janis and Joe will unpick and critique the methods and outcomes of Golden Threads through the prism of subsequent projects and research.
Janis Wilton OAM is an Adjunct Associate Professor in History at the University of New England. Joe Eisenberg OAM is Cultural Director Emeritus of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery. Janis and Joe have collaborated on a number of award-winning public history and art projects, beginning with Golden Threads.
The Dragon Tails conferences promote research into the histories and heritage of Chinese people, their descendants and their associates, in Australasia (Australia and New Zealand). The conferences also encourage awareness of the connections of Chinese in Australasia with the histories of Chinese people, their descendants and their associates in other countries.
Dragon Tails conferences encourage an approach to history which combines the skills and interests of academic, community, local, family, professional, independent and amateur historians, archaeologists and heritage workers, as well as other professionals, academics and writers with an express interest in this field of research.
Dragon Tails conferences are auspiced by the Dragon Tails Association Inc.
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