Welcome to our list of arts and cultural events happening in the NSW Central West gathered from artists, event producers, great local venues and groups across the region. Use the contact or ticketing details listed with each event.
It’s free to submit your local events
For maps and details of museums, galleries, artist studios, historic sites, Aboriginal experiences and sites, craft shops, handmade retail outlets or public art go to the Culture Maps Central NSW menu.
- This event has passed.
Bathurst’s Chinese Market Gardeners
Thu 20 July at 7:30 pm
Despite the popular notion that Chinese people came for gold and then left, there were people of Chinese heritage in Bathurst before the gold-rushes and they remained long after the gold-rushes ended. In this presentation, Dr Juanita Kwok will discuss the findings of her 2019 PhD thesis, “The Chinese in Bathurst: Recovering Forgotten Histories.”
Focusing in this talk on market gardens, Juanita will discuss how in the era before irrigation, refrigeration and rail, Chinese people grew and delivered vegetables to the residents of Bathurst and district. The extension of the rail line to Bathurst in 1876 gave Bathurst access to the Sydney market enabling the growth of a commercial vegetable-growing industry in Bathurst.
Juanita will examine the interconnectedness of the Chinese market gardeners with the Bathurst community through economic relationships, such as land leasing and share farming, and discuss the physical, social and political challenges to their success. Since publishing her thesis, descendants have shared with Juanita their family stories and with their permission, Juanita will be sharing some of these stories with the audience of this talk.
Dr Juanita Kwok is an independent, Bathurst-based historian who specialises in writing inclusive histories of regional Australia. Juanita earned a PhD at Charles Sturt University with her doctoral thesis “The Chinese in Bathurst: Recovering Forgotten Histories.” In 2022, Juanita received the History Council NSW Max Kelly Award for her article, “The Lambing Flat riots and the Chinese Quest for Compensation”. Juanita is President of Our Chinese Past Inc. and Vice-President of Dragon Tails Inc.
Related Events
The What’s On calendar covers arts and heritage events happening across the NSW Central West in the local government areas of Bathurst Region, Blayney, Cabonne, Cowra, Forbes, Lachlan, Lithgow, Mid-Western Region, Oberon, Orange, Parkes and Weddin.
Event listings are sourced or supplied from local venues and arts organisations. Many events listed here have been originally shared by the organisers on social media. Whilst all care is taken – and accuracy is our priority – we can take no responsibility for date changes or the content of contributed information. Contact the event organisers listed for more details or to book tickets.
The best way to include your event is to use our SUBMIT HERE form (under the What’s On menu at the top of each page). These listings will be manually approved by the Arts OutWest team before publication. Please allow a couple of days for listings to be published. If you have submitted an event and want to make changes just email us at artsoutwest@csu.edu.au
‘Featured events‘ are those submitted directly online by presenters.
Event promotors are asked to only include their own original images / images that they have permission to use / copyright free stock images. For more information see our fact sheet on Using Images For Promoting Events (if you can’t see this link look under ‘Opportunities’ then ‘Resources’).