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and said the government was not inclined to interfere. However, in May 1884 one of Hang Gong’s sons, Arthur,
became the first Territory inhabitant of Chinese descent to be appointed to the police force as a Constable and
an interpreter and for the next several years often appeared in court to assist Chinese members of the community
when they were called to give evidence.
Prior to this Hang Gong himself had to rely on his wife to help him when in February 1883 a Palmerston
resident, Walter Harrison, took him to court, claiming that Hang Gong owed him 50 Pounds for removing a house
from a Cavenagh Street allotment which Harrison was leasing. After lengthy evidence given by Sarah Hang Gong,
who successfully asked to give evidence on her husband’s behalf as he could speak no English, Hang Gong was
fined 35 Pounds.
The following month Hang Gong was one of a number of prominent Chinese businessmen who presented the
departing Government Resident, Edward Price , with a large crimson silk flag, imported from China, and a banner
with the names of the Chinese merchants embroidered on it. The Northern Territory Times and Gazette wrote that
the Chinese deputation ‘gave him a large crimson flag of silk with gold and silver thread and ornamented with
mirror discs in a silver setting having on it Chinese characters in black lettering and a sentence which translated
means ‘During all the time you have been in the colony you have always been good to our people.’’
During 1883 Hang Gong also began a lobbying campaign to Alfred Searcy, the Collector of Customs, regarding
the duty on opium and raising the possibility of importing the raw material and refining it in Palmerston under
Customs supervision. Timothy Jones in his The Chinese in the Northern Territory notes the fine handwriting of
Hang Gong, but this is likely to be the writing of his wife who did her own lobbying to the government.
Hang Gong, along with his business partner Yam Yan, was also involved in the building trade, and in July 1883
the Northern Territory Times and Gazette reported that Hang Gong had ‘left a most creditable sample of bricks at
our office a few days ago. They are well made and well burnt and will bear comparison with those made in South
Australia.’
By 1886 Hang Gong and Yam Yan had storekeepers’ licences for businesses in Cavenagh Street and by 1887 they
had purchased additional land on Lot 403 in Cavenagh Street from another Palmerston resident, Richard Beresford.
They later successfully appealed against the assessment of this allotment and managed to get the rates reduced.
Although their business acumen was astute and publicly recognised, they occasionally found themselves in
trouble with the Health Board as in October of 1887 when they were formally charged with owning and occupying
five huts contrary to an order of the Board of Health.
This did not deter them from pursuing further business interests, however, particularly their push for establishing
an opium industry in the Territory. In 1888 the Northern Territory Times and Gazette reported that ‘Hang Gong
and Yam Yan hope that if they can obtain the right to manufacture opium here, to be able to secure a proportion
of the Australian opium trade, they intend to try the experiment of growing the opium poppy and producing crude
opium in the Territory.’ It would appear as if this dream was never realised although Hang Gong became involved
in importing the drug.
While Hang Gong and Yam Yan often won tenders for building contracts, they did not escape some clearly
racially based criticism of their success in this area. For instance, when they won a tender for the erection of the
Warden’s quarters at Burrundie on 28 March 1890 at a price of 397 Pounds, the newspaper reported that it was
‘Another injustice to Australia.’
Nevertheless, the Times did give cautionary praise to the efforts of Hang Gong and other Chinese merchants in
planting street trees: ‘In the course of twenty or thirty years we might find Sun Mow Loong or Hang Gong or some
other representative of the Celestial people obliged to climb into the front of their shop through the branches of a
banyan. Where the banyan can spread and, in time grow as nature intended it, there is no tree that should be more
encouraged, but trimmed and kept under as it would have to be for street uses.’
In 1891 Hang Gong was one of 20 Chinese merchants to give a banquet in honour of the visiting Governor of
South Australia, the Earl of Kintore, during an official visit to the Territory. They had invited several European
residents, including the Government Resident and the Police Inspector, to attend the banquet at which Kintore
said he would convey the generosity of their gestures towards him to the Queen, as a sign of their loyalty to her.
He said that he particularly appreciated their efforts given they were living in a financially depressed time and
were undergoing hardship due to laws restricting Chinese immigration, the agitation for which had come from the
Territory.
However, in spite of any inherent anti Asian feelings in the community at the time, when Hang Gong died on
8 January 1892, the Northern Territory Times and Gazette recorded the contribution he had made to the community:
‘There died in China Town on Wednesday morning one of the oldest resident Chinese storekeepers in the Northern
Territory... The name of Hang Gong is well known to all who have been here any length of time and no Chinaman
was better respected than the senior holder of that name, whose death we have now to record. Mr Hang Gong was
amongst the first batches of Chinese to come to the Territory, and for upwards of ten years to the writer’s knowledge
he has been prominently associated with the Chinese interests of this settlement, his business being now apparently
one of the best in China Town. He leaves a considerable family; one of the sons being Arthur Hang Gong who,
in earlier days, was a member of the local police force and a useful interpreter, but latterly has devoted himself to
the mercantile and mining interests of his father’s firm. The deceased had attained the age of 56 years and previous
to this last attack he had been very much troubled on and off with severe rheumatic bouts.’
Arthur, in addition to his pioneering work in the police courts as an interpreter, took over the family’s
storekeeping businesses after his father’s death, continuing to expand and acquire more property. He also engaged
in sly grog trade, for which he frequently appeared in court, and seems to have carried on with his father’s interest
in opium. A few months after Hang Gong’s death, the Northern Territory Times and Gazette reported a ‘daring