Chinese ANZACs of the Loddon Mallee Region

As the centenary of the Great War comes to a close we celebrate the service and sacrifices of Australians of Chinese Descent from our region who enlisted in the First World War.

This exhibition provides an insight to the lives and service of WWI soldiers from the central Victorian Goldfields and the wider Loddon-Mallee Region.

Golden Dragon Museum Researcher Leigh McKinnon adds “Researching this project over the last few years has opened up several family histories to me around the lives and experiences of second and third generation Chinese Asutralians of the early twentieth century. It was particularly interesting to be focusing on a period when Australians of non-European background were still being openly discriminated against according to migration, citizenship, and military regulations, and how that was just as much the story of the ANZACs featured in the exhibition as the more familiar narratives surrounding Australia and the Great War. I can only hope that within the scope of this exhibition I have gone some way towards doing justice to their stories both in the context of the First World War and in their experiences of being Australian of Chinese descent in the era of the White Australia Policy – Lest we forget.”

The exhibition opens on the 5th May and will be at the Golden Dragon Museum until the 15th July. This travelling exhibition will travel through the Loddon Mallee region in 2018 – 2019.