GY Ting Quoy

Gilbert Yet Ting Quoy in 1902 NAA J3115, 70

Gilbert Yet Ting Quoy arrived in Australia in 1885, when he was just 12 years old.

His Certificate of Domicile, granted in 1903 to allow him to return to China for a year, indicated that his birthplace was Canton. Other sources show that Quoy came from Tung Kuan county, on the east bank of the Pearl River delta. It was one of the 13 counties of Kwangtung (Guangdong) province and one whose population had a high level of literacy.

As the Chinese in Australia were 'clannish', to use historian CF Tong's phrase, it is unsurprising to learn that Quoy was well-respected by merchants from Tung Kuan. People from this county were more prevalent in Sydney than in Melbourne. They were the first in Sydney to found a county-based society or 'tong'. That was the Koong Tee Tong in 1875.

A full-length photograph taken around 1902 shows Quoy posing for a studio portrait in a dinner suit with a masonic apron (click on photograph for full view). The image is interesting because if Quoy was a member of a local Masonic Lodge he must indeed have been integrated into European society. Masons were known for their strict eligibility requirements. But it might also be indicative of membership of one of the tongs that would come to form the Chinese Masonic Society, which opened its headquarters in Mary Street, Surry Hills, in 1911. That Society had no relationship with its Anglo-Australian counterpart and the use of the name was a strategy to demystify Chinese societies or tongs in the eyes of non-Chinese Australians. Possibly the apron and the evening suit were part of the attire of the Koong Tee Tong. If so, they indicate the degree to which these Chinese merchants had adopted the mores of the dominant culture in an attempt to integrate.

Quoy had already helped to establish the NSW Chinese Empire Reform Association in 1900, an organisation opposed to the absolute power of the Chinese emperor and supportive of democratic change in China. The Masonic Society was even more radical in their opposition to the Qing Dynasty and support for the foundation of a Chinese republic. Quoy would become a member of that Society. In 1906, Quoy advocated the establishment of special schools for Australian-born Chinese children. He had been the father of four such children for several years.

Gilbert Yet Ting Quoy's Application for Domicile Certificate. National Archives of Australia

In 1903, Quoy gave his address as Lane Cove Road, North Sydney. Council property ledgers record his name next to a single-storey five-room shop dwelling at 43 Lane Cove Road from 1900 to 1903. Sands Directory has Quoy at that address until 1904. He does not appear to have been living or working in North Sydney before or after. The municipality was, as with so many Chinese merchants, a stepping stone.

In a letter to the Queensland 'Collector of Customs' in February 1900, Quoy declares his address as 34 Lane Cove Road. It may simply have been an accidental inversion of the numbers.

On that occasion, Quoy was requesting permission to accompany his family to Stanthorpe where his wife had relatives. It was the year before Federation, so each colony had a customs office. Thereafter there was a Commonwealth Department of Customs. Gilbert's wife, Edith (née Ah Gin), was Anglo-Chinese and that heritage was, it seems, enough to get her and the Quoy children across colonial borders without the 'race-based' permission required for Gilbert. The creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 did not decrease the internal surveillance of those of Chinese heritage. Quoy had to apply again to travel to Queensland with his 'mixed-blood' wife and children in 1902.

Quoy's time in North Sydney was relatively short – particularly when taken in relation to his long and successful career, two trips to Queensland, visit to China while residing on the north shore and long and successful career. Short term resident or not, Quoy was well respected locally. On his 1903 Application for the Certificate of Domicile, he calls himself a manager of business, rather than a shopkeeper. His application was supported by North Sydney Council Sanitary Inspector TA Bennet, the Manager of the local branch of the Bank of NSW (where Quoy presumably did business) TV Wilkinson, Dr Bernard Newmarch of McLaren Street and police constable [Thomas] Fitzpatrick.

While living and perhaps working in North Sydney, Quoy was also in partnership with a produce company called Hop Lee and Co in Sydney's Surry Hills area, which was close to Haymarket where many Chinese would come to do business. That was dissolved in 1902. His business interests included agricultural land near Tamworth and a furniture factory in the southern suburb of Alexandria.

Quoy would go on to become a member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, based in Haymarket. In that capacity he was also on the Advisory Board of the China-Australia Steamship, established in 1918. James Chueywas also on the board.