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The Explorers, 1984; H Turnball, Leichhardt’s Second Journey, A First-Hand Account, 1983; E M Webster, Whirlwinds in the Plain, 1980;
A G Price, ‘The Mystery of Leichhardt’, in RGS of Australasia, SA Branch, vol 39, 1939; ADB, vol 2.
R G KIMBER, Vol 1.LEE HANG GONG: see HANG GONG, LEELEE TOY KIM (MRS LUM LOY) (c1884–1980), a businesswoman and the matriarch of one of Darwin’s
largest Chinese families, was born in Shekki, in southern China, around 1884. One of two adopted daughters
of Fong Sui Wing, Lee Toy Kim was brought to Darwin about 1898 when the destruction of the 1897 cyclone
was still evident. The other adopted daughter was Lee Leung See (later Mrs Cheong Yui). Their adoptive family
owned four stores in the Northern Territory—Wing Wah Loong and Company in Darwin, Wing Chong Loong in
Pine Creek, Wing Chong Kee in Katherine and another in Mataranka.
Although she had no formal education and only spoke the Sze Yap dialect, Lee Toy Kim could read and write
Cantonese and in later life often quoted from the philosophical works of Lo Buk Woon. Before her marriage,
she worked in the family grocery and general store in Cavenagh Street—the heart of Darwin’s Chinatown.
Around 1901, at the age of 17, she was married to Lum Loy, a mining engineer. Their early married life was
spent in the mining towns of Wandi and Brock’s Creek where Lum Loy repaired mining equipment. Their only
child, a daughter called Lizzie Yook Lin was born on 8 December 1906 at Baama Goda, a railway siding near
Brock’s Creek. The Lum Loy family settled in Pine Creek where Lum Loy died in 1918.
When Lee Toy Kim returned to Darwin with her daughter on the death of her husband, Lizzie Yook Lin attended
school, where she was dux of her class. In the years until the war, Lee Toy Kim leased a four-hectare property near
the site of the present Darwin Bowling Club at Fannie Bay from Vesteys in 1920. Here with little outside help,
she established a mango plantation of approximately 200 trees. From her plantation, she exported fruit to Western
Australia. The trees were removed by troops during the war to deny cover to the Japanese in the event of an enemy
landing on Fannie Bay beach.
In 1923, Lizzie Yook Lin married Chin Loong Tang and they made their home in Emungalan, opening a
store there and later in Katherine. In 1935 after their return to Darwin, Lee Toy Kim sold the mango plantation
and moved back into town to help run the Chin family cafe on the corner of Bennett and Cavenagh streets while
Chin Loon Tang was in Hong Kong. She later purchased a block of land at the Stuart Park ‘police paddock’ near
the present site of the large oil tanks at Frances Bay. There she ran chickens, walking daily from town to the farm
to tend the birds and collect the eggs. The latter were sold to Gee Fong Ming’s cafe in Darwin.
An ardent worshipper at the Chinese temple all her life, Lee Toy Kim was visiting the temple when Darwin
was bombed, just before 10 am on 19 February 1942, by the Japanese. She reluctantly evacuated the town with
members of the Que Noy family who drove her to Adelaide River. From there she went by train to Katherine and
joined her daughter and grandchildren who had been sent out of Darwin after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour
on 7 December 1941.
The family was then evacuated by army convoy along the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs on 27 March 1942,
after the Japanese also attacked Katherine from the air. They stayed in Alice Springs with the Quee family until
joined by Chin Loong Tang, and then continued their journey south to Adelaide.
In Adelaide Lee Toy Kim helped her son-in-law and his family run a fruit and vegetable shop in Hansan
(now Poultney) Street for two years.
In 1944, the Chin family moved to Sydney, taking Lee Toy Kim with them. There, on 7 August 1945,
her daughter Lizzie died of a kidney complaint shortly after giving birth to her ninth child.
At war’s end, Lee Toy Kim travelled with the late Harry Chan’s mother back to Adelaide where they were met
by Lee Toy Kim’s eldest grandson, Ronald Chin and accompanied back to Darwin via Alice Springs.
Back in Darwin Lee Toy Kim found the town in ruins and all the land acquired by the government. The policy
of the latter was to gain control of the city centre and to eradicate Chinatown. Landowners were compensated
block for block. However, the new blocks were a quarter acre in area while the old block size was half an acre.
Lee Toy Kim was compensated for her chicken farm and chose to take up half of the property previously owned
by Chin Loong Tang on the corner of Henry Street and the Stuart Highway. Chin Loong Tang retained the other
half, thus keeping the family and landholding close together.
Lee Toy Kim lived on this piece of land for the rest of her very full life. She established a garden there and
her grandson Ronald built her a house. Many Darwin residents of the 1950s and ‘60s remember her as Lum Loy,
the elderly lady in traditional Chinese trousers, jacket and hat who walked daily from Stuart Park into Darwin.
In the year before her death she was still tending her garden in which she grew many tropical fruits, such as
mangoes, guavas, five-corners, custard apples, ginger, garlic, chillies, Chinese melons and bitter melons. Like her
son-in-law, Chin Loong Tang, she continued to be a regular worshipper at the Chinese Temple. She regularly took
part in all the traditional festivals celebrated in the Darwin Chinese community, one of which was Ching Ming,
when the souls of the ancestors are honoured by prayer and offerings of food, paper money and clothing.
Her death on 20 August 1980 at the age of about 96 and subsequent burial at Gardens Road Cemetery ended an
era. She was remembered by Europeans and Chinese alike with great respect for her strength of character and her
sense of independence, despite her reverence for, and upholding of, tradition and the family. With her died much
valuable historical information about Darwin and its Chinese community between Federation and the Second
World War.