Ribbons of Memory

Childhood games turned into an obsession with the 19th-century Chinese goldminers of arrowtown, resulting in a novel where history is both researched and invented.

Words Maxine Alterio  Photographs Miz Watanabe

For a small town, Arrowtown has a big history. Situated at the foot of the mountains of western Otago, this former goldfield settlement was previously known as Fox’s Diggings, Arrow River and Arrow Town. Original buildings such as the Bank of New Zealand and the General Store have been preserved.  So have several miners’ cottages, now dwarfed by an avenue of oaks planted in the main street between 1867 and 1877. This diminutive thoroughfare is one of the most photographed in New Zealand, partly due to its character but also because of its historical legacy.

British and Irish miners, along with a smattering of Americans, French, Italians, Germans and Scandinavians, arrived in the region after gold was discovered in 1862. Nine years later, Arrowtown’s population had risen to 138 settlers and 70 Chinese sojourners, mainly from the Pearl River Delta. The industrious, mostly illiterate or semi-literate sojourners reworked land that had been abandoned. Their purpose was two-fold: to earn money to send or take home and to return to their families in this life or as bones.

Remnants of their presence were still evident in the 1950s when my family first went to stay at an aunt and uncle’s holiday home. With siblings and cousins I hung around the old gaol, hoping to be called upon to protect the town’s inhabitants from calamitous acts, the nature of which depended on what films we had viewed in the town hall or on my uncle’s home projector. Our most daring activities, though, took place in Ah Lum’s dilapidated and deserted store, perched on a rise at the other end of town.

It was originally built in 1883 for the market gardener Wong Hop Lee. In this dark, alien space our imaginations slipped from their already loose reins. We played variations of “frighteners” which involved persuading gullible playmates to enter the gold room. Once inside, they’d be tormented through the small grille in the door with embellished accounts of gruesome historical events. The murder of Mrs Young by Lee Tow at the Keyburn diggings was a favourite. On other occasions we clambered into the store’s loft and terrified each other with stories about thieves and kidnappers until even a bird landing on the roof could tip us into hysteria. Despite these self-inflicted fears, we kept returning to Ah Lum’s store to imagine times different from our own.

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