Registration for Dragon Tails 2025 is now open.

Theme: Relationships
Location: Woodcraft Room at George Williams Hotel, 317-325 George St, Brisbane
Convenors: Natalie Fong, Paul Macgregor and Karen Schamberger
Conference Dates: Thurs 27 – Sun 30 November 2025
Thursday 27 - pre-conference tours and events
Friday 28 to Sunday 30 - conference proceedings

Following on from the success of the Dragon Tails conferences at Ballarat (2009), Melbourne (2011), Wollongong (2013), Cairns (2015), Bendigo (2017), Wellington (2019) and Launceston (2022) we will be holding, in Brisbane, the eighth Dragon Tails, an Australasian conference on Chinese diaspora history and heritage.

This year’s conference theme highlights the role of relationships in shaping the lives of Chinese Australasians as well as the world around them. Papers will explore relations between Chinese people within the same family, clan or district as well as relations with those outside the Chinese community, including agents who contracted them, employers, officials, and governments as well as with neighbours, First Nations people, customers and other business-people.

Keynote speaker will be Dr Sandi Robb, whose presentation will be “Joining the dots, reflecting the journey and leaving a legacy: reflections on how to stay true to yourself when life takes over”, weaving, into her talk, the development of relationships, promotion of Chinese Australian history and heritage, and community engagement.

Sandi Robb is a historian and Executive Officer of the Cairns Historical Society and Cairns Museum. She has had an extensive career in cultural heritage and as a freelance heritage consultant specialising in interpretation, research, exhibition, collection management and curatorial projects across North Queensland. Sandi has presented at local, national and international conferences on Chinese Australian History, with a clear focus on the Chinese Family Landscape of Queensland. She takes a multi-disciplinary approach to her work which is reflected in publications including book Cairns Chinatown: A Heritage Study, and more recently chapter “Big Country: Dragons Dreaming Queensland’s Historical Aboriginal–Chinese family relations” in Zhou, Our Country: Aboriginal Chinese people in Australia. From 2009 – 2021 she worked seasonally at the Willie Mar Heritage Site in rural and remote Winton and she collaborated with the Ingham Family History Association Inc., in 2018-2020, to research, design and curate Re-discovering Buk-Ti: Chinese Settlers in the Herbert River Valley exhibition. This won the 2021 AMaGA Award for Organizations Volunteer Run, for its work exploring the history of Chinese settlers in the region, including their role in the sugar industry, and the discovery of the Buk Ti Goong temple, in Halifax. She was a founding member of the Chinese Heritage in Northern Australia Inc., (CHINA Inc) a not for profit organization committed to promoting northern Australia’s Chinese History and Heritage, and is a member of the Professional Historians Association of Queensland (PHAQ).

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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