The surprisingly Australian history of Chinese dragon parades
While dragon parades are popularly viewed as displays of Chinese or Cantonese tradition and culture, their history demonstrates how deeply Australian they also are.
- While dragon parades are popularly viewed as displays of Chinese or Cantonese tradition and culture, their history demonstrates how deeply Australian they also are.
- Our historical research shows that until relatively recently Australia’s dragon parade tradition was closely associated with Chinese-Australian philanthropy and engagement with Australian civic life, rather than with Chinese spiritual practice.
The earliest dragon arrivals
- The first dragon, nicknamed the “Duck Bill” dragon, was imported from Southern China to Bendigo more than 100 years ago and paraded from 1892 to 1898.
- Nearby, Ballarat’s first dragon – also the oldest surviving dragon – was purchased in 1897.
- The “Moon Face” dragon was Bendigo’s second dragon, paraded for just one year in 1900.
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A valued part of local fundraising
- Chinese communities were as keen as everyone else to assist with fundraising, display their culture and participate in festivities.
- Historian Pauline Rule has shown that Chinese communities have contributed to public fundraising displays in rural cities since at least 1866.
The popularity of dragons
Dragons were expensive and valued, and as such were also loaned to other communities for fundraising displays. In 1897, Bendigo’s Duck Bill dragon travelled to Sydney to participate in the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee fundraiser. Then, both Bendigo’s Moon Face and the Ballarat dragon, as well as costumes from Bendigo, Beechworth and Castlemaine, were loaned to raise funds for the Melbourne Women’s Hospital in May 1900.
That so many Victorian communities could purchase dragons demonstrated their prosperity and joint commitment to Australia philanthropy and public life. It perhaps also encouraged a friendly intercity rivalry. Processional dragons were so popular that some communities that couldn’t access one would make their own imitation ones.
Royal welcome
- Of the five Chinese dragons brought to Victoria in the 19th century, three participated in Federation celebrations.
- As John Fitzgerald shows, many Chinese Australians were as excited about the possibilities of Federation as other Australians.
- To mark the royal visit, welcome arches were constructed in Melbourne, Ballarat and Perth.
Only a few long-distance photographs of the other dragon survive.
- According to a 1903 newspaper article, Melbourne’s Chinese Bo Leong Society had specifically purchased this dragon for the 1901 celebrations, at a cost of 250 pounds.
- The third dragon involved in the festivities, the Ballarat dragon, was used to decorate the Chinese arch that welcomed the royal couple during their visit to Ballarat.
A legacy in Australia
- Astoundingly, these three Federation-era dragons – three of the five oldest surviving imperial dragons in the world – still survive today.
- Traditionally, when dragons reach the end of their life they are ritually burned.
Sophie Couchman has undertaken research work for the See Yup Society on a voluntary basis and formerly curator at the Museum of Chinese Australian History. Leigh McKinnon is the Research Officer at Bendigo's Golden Dragon Museum, the home of the world's oldest complete processional dragon Loong.