when did the chinese first arrive in australia
History of Chinese Australians Some historians have theorised that Northern Indigenous Australians may even have had dealings with Chinese traders or come across Chinese goods particularly through trepanging. Sir Joseph Banks was of the opinion that any British colony in Australia could be populated by 'useful inhabitants from China'.[1] The first official undisputed link between China and Australia comes from the very beginning of the colony of New South Wales. The First Fleet ships, Scarborough, Charlotte and Lady Penrhyn, after dropping off their convict load, sailed for Canton to buy tea and other goods to sell on their return to England.[2] The Bigge Report attributed the high level of tea drinking to 'the existence of an intercourse with China from the foundation of the Colony â€¦' Many British East India Company ships used Australia as a port of call on their trips to and from buying tea from China. That the ships carrying such cargo had Chinese crew members is likely and that some of the crew and possibly passengers embarked at the port of Sydney is probable. Certainly by 1818, Mak Sai Ying (also known as John Shying) had arrived and after a period of farming became, in 1829, the publican of The Lion in Parramatta. John Macarthur, a prominent pastoralist, employed three Chinese people on his properties in the 1820s and records may well have neglected others.[3] Another way ethnic Chinese made it to Australia was from the new British possessions of Malaysia and Singapore.