Discovering Christmas Island’s brutal Chinese past

Christmas Island has a long, often dark, Chinese history that spans more than 100 years of phosphate mining. A history that locals are just beginning to truly explore – and one that could benefit their futures.

Captured in a black-and-white photograph, is a shell of a man held upright by two others.

He is a Chinese phosphate miner - emaciated and dying from lack of nutrition, struck down by beriberi disease.

He is one of hundreds who died from the disease on Christmas Island in the early 1900s.

A young child is buried with a simple headstone with the belief that she may return to this world because she was taken too young. Source: SBS

The photo is one of many that adorn the walls of a simple, but powerful, museum on Christmas Island.

In another photo, bare-footed and shirtless, Chinese phosphate miners hack into phosphate deposits under a beating tropical sun.

The photos – as well as diagrams, government papers, maps, mining and cultural relics – illustrate a part of Christmas Island’s more than 100 year long mining history.

It’s a history built on the exploitation and deaths of hundreds of Chinese mine workers who were virtually treated as slaves.

It began in the late 1800s when phosphate deposits were discovered on Christmas Island.

The island became a British colony and mining was underway by 1900 with the first phosphate shipments sent to Japan and Germany.

Chinese indentured labour was shipped to the island to mine the phosphate for the Christmas Island Phosphate Company as well as some Malays and Sikhs who worked as fishermen or guards.

The Chinese were known as “coolies” and were the bottom of the pecking order.

The museum’s curator Hélène Bartleson said the museum was a lasting tribute to a forgotten or little remembered group of people – many of whom lost their lives on the island.

“There were lots who died here between horrendous working conditions and beriberi, in particular,” she said.

“Hundreds died to the point where they were about to be forced to close the mine because their workforce was dying around them on a daily basis.”

The museum has become a source of pride for the islanders.

The majority of residents are from a Chinese heritage, but are not descended from the first miners.

The miners were single men, or had to leave their families behind, but the Chinese culture is still strong on the island.

There are scores of temples to a variety of Chinese gods dotted around the island which are regularly attended and maintained by the island’s residents.

As for the museum, it chronicles the early days of the mine, the union hunger strike in Canberra in the 1980s to get fair pay for the island’s miners and personal stories in between.

Much of the museum’s collection has been donated by locals.

“I was constantly gobsmacked by the stuff that they were offering and that they’re still offering,” Ms Bartleson said.

“This is stage one. Stage two and three have been planned and we’ve got five other exhibits and lots of other things that have been donated and it’ll happen in due course when the money turns up.

“We accept that on Christmas Island, more than elsewhere, things take time and if they’re going to be done properly you’re patient, you preserve, you do what you have to do to have something like this come together.”

Unearthing history

It could be argued the museum is actually the second stage in exploring Christmas Island’s history.

Ms Bartleson started figuratively digging up the island’s past in its two Chinese cemeteries.

The retired teacher from the New South Wales Blue Mountains first came to Christmas Island more than 10 years ago.

Her curiosity had been piqued by a line in a book comparing Victorian Chinese mine workers to Christmas Island’s workforce, but she could find little else.

The student of Chinese languages and culture travelled to Christmas Island and discovered two Chinese cemeteries laid out according to the ancient Book of the Dead.

“One thousand years of tradition here,” she said.

“Untouched and beautiful, and they’re part of Australia, but Australia doesn’t know it – yet.”

The graves are still tended by the island’s Chinese elders and it was with their permission and help that Ms Bartleson began restoring them.

As well as an historical and cultural repository, they are also a tourism drawcard.

“Mainland Chinese are absolutely enthralled to learn that this is here because it helps them to reconnect to a past that no longer exists on mainland China because traditional cemeteries of the type that we have here, no longer exist there,” Ms Bartleson said.

“You’re not able to bury in China any more because it takes up too much land and those that were there have been bulldozed for market gardening or for high-rise apartments to accommodate a growing population.”

High hopes for tourism

The National Trust of Australia has joined the islanders in highlighting their past as well as their culture.

The hope is to draw more tourists to the island.

“The projects that the National Trust works on is not just about heritage,” said Lisa Sturis, the coordinator of heritage services.

“It's about working with communities developing economies, so if we can work with the Chinese community and develop these places in a way that's respectful to their culture, but also creates another product that can be promoted then that can only bring benefits to the island."

Ms Sturis said Australia would be surprised about the cemeteries, temples and relics in the museum given much media coverage on Christmas Island was about asylum seekers or red crab migrations.

“I think it definitely represents that particular cultural group,” she said.

“In Australia, you get different Chinese communities all around regional and metropolitan Australia, but I think the extent of the cemeteries, the extent of the temples is really quite unique to Christmas Island.”