Community is often considered as operating primarily in an established physical or geographical space. Temporal and psychological factors however play a large role in establishing communities of interest based on the existence of common values strengthened by social cohesiveness. This paper explores the concept of 'community' based on focus rather than locus. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Chinese 'sojourners' worked at gold mining sites in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The itinerancy of the Chinese miners, the gender imbalance of the gold fields, the 'otherness' that was attached to their presence on what was invariably regarded as being exclusively European domains and the tendency for the Chinese to work cooperatively are all factors that contributed to a need for the Chinese to be able to internalize their sense of community. The majority of the primary information for the Chinese on goldfields comes from European newspapers accounts of their activities and often contains a heavy bias. Archaeological work at several sites in Australia, New Zealand and in Canada has revealed insights into the communities that formed and dispersed as the fortunes of the gold fields waxed and waned. Artefactual evidence indicates that the retention of strong socio-cultural identifiers was accomplished through the establishment of trade networks. The ability of the Chinese miners to keep in touch with their homeland villages via kin-ship patterns also contributed greatly to their sense of community on the remote gold fields as did their continued use of familiar foods, products and established customs. By surrounding themselves with the familiar the Chinese miners managed to transport community within themselves, establishing the physical parameters as required.

Chinese Brown Glazed Stoneware is a common artefact found throughout the Pacific Rim. This article presents a broad overview of its importance as not only a marker of the presence of Overseas Chinese but as a material representation of foodways that encompassed all aspects of the extended cultural lives of diasporic Chinese.

The early days after the discovery of gold at Rocky River in northern New South Wales would see potential miners of all creeds, whether labourers or more 'cultured' folk, lured to this golden landscape or ours by the 'fever of gold' and by the possibility of making a quick fortune here. The obvious diversity in the character of this fluid population could and did result in confrontations - here as elsewhere - on many occasions, leading often to more violent altercations by day and night. It is not surprising therefore for this environment to encourage rogues and villains to be part of 'our' mining scene. This book is an interlinked companion to both the work and living style of that populace, and to Victorian age gold mining generally. For it tells us much about the skills, technical processes, thoughts, actions and language of those same miners, and many others 'on the fields' in Eastern Australia, as known, observed and written about by one of the nation's most famed colonial novelists.

Nearly thirty years ago I was living on a rural property to the north west of Armidale and studying some archaeology subjects as part of my undergraduate degree. The owner of the property knew of my course of study and suggested I might be interested in taking a look at what he described as "a Chinese aqueduct built to take water to the Rocky River goldfield". That visit to the site of a water race remained in my memory and ultimately resulted in the writing of a Master's thesis in archaeology that required me to explore the role of Chinese miners on the Rocky River goldfield. The general background to the history and geology of the field is covered elsewhere in this volume; this article will fill in some of the detail of the Chinese contribution to the working of the field between 1856 and the early 1900s based largely on contemporary newspaper reports from the 'Armidale Express' which began publication in 1856, the same year that Chinese began arriving on the goldfield in significant numbers that made them stand out as a separate ethnic contingent distinguished from the largely European mining community by their language, dress, habits, food, appearance and work practises. Rocky River was from 1852 until 1856 an alluvial field of only limited productivity and the Rocky River had been worked for some fifteen miles of its length from above the junction with the Kentucky Creek down to its junction with the Bundarra River. During these years the population and fortunes of the Rocky River fluctuated as the miners moved up and down the watercourse working the riverbed, water-holes and banks for the recent (in geological terms) alluvials using picks, shovels, barrows, carts, dishes and cradles. The field, after four years, still possessed many of the attributes or a 'poor man's digging's' and had been receiving adequate water during much of that time. The discovery of gold at Mount Jones in 1856, however, substantially altered the nature of the field and it underwent a rapid but short-lived growth in both productivity and population.

This work is one concerned to both explore and to give a clearer idea of the surviving evidence and related landscape records of the nineteenth century Rocky River goldfield in Northern New South Wales, but - first - to present material of a like more general matter, and one fascinating to all Australians and travellers, namely its once magistrate's full, indeed rich, texture of the related technical and social language used on all the major fields of auriferous mining as practised in this country in the nineteenth century. To avoid the excessively technical, we have focused on the numerous gold mining and fictionally plotted - yet hugely readable and colourful - texts by the same magistrate, the long Australia-domiciled and prolific novelist, Rolf Boldrewood (1826-1915), who, towards the end of his Mining Warden career, served briefly on these very New England goldfields, while in his late official career posting in 1884-1885 to the roles of Commissioner and Resident Magistrate in the adjacent Armidale, in northern New South Wales. As will be made clear below, his powerful text, 'The Miner's Right', is one penned not long before he came west to the Uralla field, and he would certainly have had various of its minimally fictionalized squabbles, claim contesting, and even racism - and worse - very clearly in mind.