The Great Trek to Gold
2022
An experimental photobook: inkjet on paper, kraft envelope, gold foil, slide holder, newspaper, joss paper, index cards and swing tags
Dimensions variable
During the Australian gold rush, more than 16,000 Chinese migrants trekked from South Australia to the Victorian goldfields to evade anti-Chinese immigration restrictions. Their three-week journey spanned over 600 kilometres across the Australian landscape, leaving behind traces, artefacts, and stories that continue to shape Australia’s multicultural identity.
The Great Trek to Gold is a long-term photographic investigation that retraces and reimagines this historic journey. It explores both the experiences of historical Chinese migrants and my own search for a connection to their histories as a first-generation Chinese immigrant. Combining documentary photography, archival research, and auto-ethnographic storytelling, the work moves between past and present, fact and fiction, and the personal and collective to explore histories that remain incomplete, fragmented, or inaccessible.
