On 19 January 1937, six mourners accompanied the body of Ah Tui (Charlie Dow), otherwise known as "Charlie No Chin", to his grave in the Church of England Cemetery at Campbells Hill.
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His death, at 100, said the Mercury, "removes the last of the Chinese gardeners in the Maitland district".
It's hard to imagine today a diet with no greens, but until the Chinese gardeners arrived in Maitland in 1868 that was how it was. If you wanted anything other than meat, potatoes, corn and pumpkin, you had to grow it yourself.
The Mercury of 7 August 1868 waxed lyrical about Telarah's first acre-and-a-half Chinese Garden.
The neatness, the total lack of weeds, the raised beds, the wonderful variety of vegetables, the use of various "fertilisers" and the continuous watering from hand-held cans all contributed to a revolution in agriculture. It showed what "a combination of industry and energy with skill and perseverance" could achieve. For the next 40 years other Chinese gardens, all on leased land, sprang up at Fishery Creek, Paterson, Greta, Branxton, Victoria Bridge, Tenambit, Morpeth, Narrowneck and Phoenix Park.
At the biggest of them, near Louth Park Road and Park Street, more than 20 men tilled ten acres. Most were partners, sharing the profits and accumulating cash to remit to their families in China. They lived in sheds, three or four in a room, rostered to gardening during the day and delivering produce through the night. Most had come to Australia to mine for gold but rapidly realised that there was more gold in vegetables.
As the Mercury noted: "[One] visits the town every morning, bearing a couple of baskets well laden, slung on bamboo cane across his shoulder, and brings in from 15s. to 30s. per day; and of course sales are made on the premises; they are very well satisfied now with the remuneration their toils meet with."
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As their market grew and produce increased they turned to human or horse-drawn carts and toured the suburbs haggling over prices with housewives and maids.
When the Farmers' Union Markets were established in Steam Street, their produce sold around the Valley and in Sydney.
The Chinese survived not just frequent floods and droughts, but also the Europeans. They did not mix well, didn't drink or carouse (they were allowed their opium) and did everything possible to keep the peace, even respecting the Sabbath. Their festivities with crackers, at New Year especially, were a sightseer's delight.
Despite this, especially during the White Australia Policy debate around the end of the 19th century, they were pelted by youths, attacked by drunken men (one of their women was viciously raped), abused by housewives, raided by thieves looking for stashed coin and had their crops destroyed.
They were accused of living in unsanitary conditions, befouling their produce with dirty water, polluting air and water with noxious substances, introducing leprosy and numerous other sins. Some mothers didn't want their children sitting next to "filthy Chinese" in school.
The White Australia Policy, not the abuse, destroyed them. It made it impossible to recruit suitable labour or to visit China and return.
Meanwhile mechanisation, irrigation and land consolidation enabled Maitland's European farmers to plant and harvest huge crops. By 1910 the Chinese were pretty well gone. Ah Tui was the last.
