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he married Frances Mary Braddock at Port Augusta and they went abroad for a year. On returning he became a
stock and station agent, sharebroker and commission agent in Adelaide as well as maintaining the camel transport
service, managed at Hergott Springs by Fushar Ackbar.
Chewings was excited by marine fossils discovered on Tempe Downs by the manager F Thornton and in 1891
published ‘Geological notes on the Upper Finke basin’ in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia.
He listed the fossils and tentatively began an interpretation of the region’s succession of rock strata. That year he
left with his family to study geology at University College, London, and the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
He was elected to fellowships of the Royal Geographical and Geological Societies, London. In his paper ‘Central
Australia’ (1891) in the former society’s Proceedings, he reviewed the region’s history and praised its pastoral
possibilities, mineral wealth, and suitability for date growing and ostrich farming.
In 1894 Chewings became a mining consultant at Coolgardie, Western Australia, where he was esteemed for
his honest, factual reports during the goldfield’s boom years. In 1902 he returned to South Australia and spent
almost two decades in Central Australia as a mining consultant and camel carrier of supplies from the railhead,
Oodnadatta, to Northern Territory stations and mines. In 1909 he surveyed a stock route from Barrow Creek to
Victoria River, and by means of light boring equipment transported on camels, proved the availability of water
throughout at shallow depth and sank a number of wells. He described in detail this country, long notorious for
its lack of surface waters, in the Geographical Journal, October 1930. During the First World War he mined
wolfram in the Northern Territory and transported it by camel to Oodnadatta. After retirement Chewings published
frequently on Central Australian geology in the Royal Society of South Australia’s Transactions.
Throughout much of his life Chewings had close contact with Aborigines and he published a popular account
of them, Back in the Stone Age (1936). In retirement he compiled an Aranda vocabulary including all the words
previously recorded by other students and himself. This and the manuscript of his translation of C F T Strehlow’s
‘Die Aranda–und Loritja–Stamma in Zentral Australien’ (1915) are in the University of Adelaide library.
Chewings was an earnest, energetic man with the practicality to work successfully in adverse conditions:
he accomplished notable pioneer work in geology and the study of Aboriginal culture. Time was to prove him
over-optimistic in some of his expectations of mineral discoveries in the Northern Territory. In 1903 he regarded
the Winnecke’s Reward (Paddy’s Goose) goldfield as potentially very rich but little gold was obtained there. In a
letter to the Observer, 20 December 1913, he wrote, ‘Who can say there are not Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie, and
Mount Bischoffs in the Northern Territory?’ Three quarters of a century later they were still to be discovered.
Survived by his wife, two daughters and two sons, he died on 9 June 1937 at Gloen Osmond and was buried
in West Terrace cemetery. His estate was sworn for probate at 1079 Pounds. His name was perpetuated in the
Chewings Range, Mount Chewings and a street in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
W F Morrison, The Aldine History of South Australia, 1890; W B Kimberly (ed), History of West Australia, 1897; R Cockburn, Pastoral
Pioneers of South Australia, 1925; E G Knox, Who’s Who in Australia, 1934; B O’Neil, In Search of Mineral Wealth, 1982; Observer.
HANS MINCHAM, Vol 1.CHIN, NELLIE: see FONG, NELLIECHIN LOONG TANG: see TANG, CHIN LOONGCHIN SHUE HONG (QUONG, HENRY) (1900–1946), businessman, was born in Pine Creek in June 1900
to Chin Wah Too and Fong Toy. Both parents had come to the Northern Territory from Canton; his father as an
indentured labourer to work on the Palmerston–Pine Creek railway, his mother as a young bride at the age of 16.
Chin Shue Hong grew up in the harsh bush environment of Pine Creek and received little formal education.
He spent most of his early years helping his parents in the family shop and vegetable garden.
In 1917 he married Low So Oy, an Australian-born Chinese aged 16. Over the next 29 years she bore him
thirteen children, six girls and seven boys. The first child died of influenza at the age of ten and the thirteenth child
died very shortly after birth. Another son died after a lung operation, leaving a total of ten surviving children.
By the late 1920s the world depression had reached remote Pine Creek, which until that time had been a bustling
mining town including a significant Chinese population. When the mines closed many unmarried Chinese returned
to China but most of those who had married local Chinese girls, like the Chins, stayed. The future nevertheless
looked very bleak to them. They felt that their business was dying and other opportunities for employment were
non-existent. Consequently, Chin Shue Hong moved his whole family, including his aged parents, to Longreach in
central Queensland. There he began a small market-garden business to keep his family going.
In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Chin Shue Hong was drafted into a local unit of the army
and was assigned to work as a cook. As a result of his experience working with white Australians in the army
he changed his name to Henry Quong. He did this because soldiers had mispronounced his first name ‘Hong’.
When he was discharged after the war ended he decided to move his family back ‘home’ to the Northern Territory.
His father by this time had died.
In 1945 Darwin was in ruins but many families returned. Henry Quong opened a baker’s shop on Smith Street,
Darwin’s main commercial centre, and his business thrived, it being the first of its kind in the town.
In March 1946 he was suddenly struck with stomach cramp and was taken to Darwin Hospital. He died the
following day, of what was believed to be appendicitis. He was buried in the family plot at Darwin cemetery.
Quong’s second son, Edward, popularly known as Eddie, had then just turned 21. He took over the running
of Quong’s bakery and began to shoulder the burden of supporting a large family which still included an ailing
grandmother, his newly widowed mother and ten brothers and sisters, all housed under one roof.