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and a half Fong went to China with his father, who took his wife’s bones back for burial. When King Gee Fong
returned to Brock’s Creek, Tom Fong remained in China with his father’s second wife. During this time Fong’s
father bought a small mixed vegetable garden in Pine Creek.
Fong returned to Darwin from Canton for schooling. He attended Darwin Public School until the age of 16,
finishing grade six. He then joined his father at Pine Creek and worked as an apprentice in the market-gardening
business.
At seventeen he became engaged to a Chinese girl, named Nellie Chan, born in Darwin on 16 August 1916,
whom he married in Canton on 8 March 1933. Their first child, a girl named Margaret, was born in 1934 but died
only two months later. Within five years, four more daughters were born and survived (Joan, 1936; Veronica, 1938;
Nellie, 1939; and Barbara, 1940).
From 1939 onward Fong had to work very hard on his own account as his father had retired to China, where he
died in 1940.
After 19 February 1942 most business in Darwin came to an abrupt halt due to the Japanese bombing and the
evacuation of the civilian population to Adelaide. However, Fong’s business prospered: in order to continue his
market-gardening business he declined to go south but his wife, then expecting their sixth child, and their other
children were evacuated by army truck and train to Adelaide. In fact, Fong’s business was at its peak during the
war years as there was a great demand for his fresh fruit and vegetables from the Australian and American military
forces and civilian road builders. He had to work single-handed, hand pumping and manually watering the crops.
The established price of threepence per pound for any kind of fresh vegetables and fruit remained unchanged for
years.
After the Second World War, Fong supplied his fruit and vegetables wholesale to the Department of Works.
When the Department moved its activities south he had to rely on retailers in Darwin to buy his products and his
business fell off.
In 1949 he moved his entire family to Darwin, partly for the sake of his daughters’ schooling and partly
to obtain a different job. He bought an ex-army ‘Sidney Williams’ hut in Stuart Park for the family to live in.
He partitioned the hut into rooms and built the kitchen. Two years later he bought a block of land and house in
Fannie Bay. He was then working in a government hostel, Belsen Camp, as an assistant cook and during this time
two sons, Tom (1948) and David (1950) were born. In 1954 he left this job to work as a labourer for Water Supply,
a job he retained until retiring in 1969. During this period, however, he bought a block of land in Nightcliff and had
a service station, a garage and two shops built on it. In 1974 during Cyclone Tracy, Fong lost nearly everything.
It took him three years before his house, shops and service station were back in working order.
On 6 October 1980 he died of a heart attack, aged 66, leaving his wife, five daughters, two sons and twenty-three
grandchildren.
Tom Fong was typical of many early Chinese settlers. He was extremely hard working and devoted to earning
a living—in fact, his first break from work was taken in 1970 when he was 56 years old. He made an overland trip
to Brisbane—his first visit to a major Australian city.
Family information.
MY-VAN TRAN, Vol 1.FORREST, ALEXANDER (1849–1901), explorer and politician, was born on 22 September 1849 at Picton, near
Bunbury in Western Australia, fourth of the nine sons of William Forrest, miller and farmer, and his wife Margaret
Guthrie, nee Hill. After education at Bishop Hale’s school, 1863–65, he worked at his father’s mill while training
as a surveyor. In 1870 he was second-in-command to his brother John Forrest’s transcontinental expedition along
the edge of the Great Australian Bight. In January 1871 he was appointed government surveyor for the Albany
district, but later that year the Survey Department moved to a contract system and Forrest went into independent
practice. In 1871 and 1876 he led expeditions to the Hampton Plains east of the present site of Kalgoorlie. He also
served as second-in-command to John Forrest’s second transcontinental expedition of 1874, the later stages of
which traversed the country between the Western Australian border and the overland telegraph line at Peake Hill.
In 1879 Alexander Forrest led a six-man expedition which resulted in the discovery and naming of the Kimberley
district in the far north of Western Australia. Running short of provisions after leaving the Ord River, the party had
to make a dash for the overland telegraph line, arriving safely near Katherine.
News of the Kimberley country provoked a speculative boom in pastoral leases. Forrest, who on 15 January 1880
married Amy Eliza Barnett-Lennard, retired from surveying and set up a Perth office as land agent and specialist
adviser to Kimberley investors. His clients included Osmond and Panton, founders of the Ord River Station, as
well as several of the major overlanders who traversed the Northern Territory in 1883–85, such as the Duracks and
the Macdonald brothers. His report helped to draw attention to the Victoria River District and was followed by the
taking up of Victoria River Downs and Wave Hill stations; it also attracted Northern Territory prospectors to the
Kimberleys and led indirectly to the Halls Creek gold rush of 1880.
In 1887 Forrest entered the Western Australian Legislative Council as first member for Kimberley. When at the
coming of responsible government in 1890 the constituency was divided, he chose to sit in the Legislative Assembly
as member for West Kimberley and was never seriously challenged. During Sir John Forrest’s premiership (1890–
1901) he was Government Whip and chief spokesman for the protectionist lobby seeking tariffs on farm and pastoral
produce. He was a hospitable if autocratic mayor of Perth for six years (1892–95, 1897–1900) at a time when civic
resources were strained to the utmost by the population boom caused by the 1890s gold rush. He speculated in
goldmining boldly and with varying fortunes and also held partnerships in several sheep stations.