When I met Harry Koay the other day in his office, we had a chat over old times. He told me of a couple who gave up their teaching jobs in Malaysia to go to Australia.It seemed that the couple now teach and give tuitions in their new homeland. His tale reminded me of my own school teachers who had migrated. At least one went to Singapore and two went to Australia. That was in the seventies. I read that there was archaeological evidence that suggest that Chinese traders might have reached the coast of northern Australia before European colonization. Darwin, a major city in the Northern Territory has in fact a long-established Chinese population and it had even its first Chinese mayor in 1966. Things probably was not so easy for Chinese there though. Chinese population was already visible in 1851 when many went to New South Wales, attracted by the discovery of gold in the so-called New Gold Mountain. Then, they became the targets of violent attacks and discriminatory legislation. There used to be a White Australia Policy too which started in 1901 that favours Whites and restricted the non-white immigration to Australia. My teachers most probably migrated Down Under when the policy ended.
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