1850 - 1903

Born in Hsinning, Canton in 1850, Mei Quong Tart was a tea and silk merchant, philanthropist and prominent figure of 19th century Sydney. He supported various charities and community groups by providing dinners, gifts and entertainment at his own expense.

Quong was just nine years old when he travelled to Australia with his uncle, who was bringing a shipload of Chinese labourers to the Braidwood goldfields in New South Wales. Quong lived with a white family who taught him English, converted him to Christianity and helped him to invest in goldmining. At the age of 18 Quong was already a wealthy man. Quong was very popular due to his active involvement in sports. He was captain of the local cricket team, founded a football team and promoted horse racing. He was naturalised in 1871.

Quong was among the early Chinese settlers in Waverley, where he built a house called Huntingtower in Evans Street, Bronte. He was one of the first Chinese persons in Australia to be initiated into the Society of Freemasons. In 1885, he was initiated into the Lodge of Tranquillity which convened at Bondi, before eventually rising to the status of Master Mason the following year. In 1881, Quong visited his family in China and on his return opened business as a tea and silk merchant. His tea rooms in King Street and later in the Queen Victoria Markets (now the Queen Victoria Building) were the finest in the City, where he entertained governors and important visitors to the colony, including the members of the 1891 Federal Convention. In 1886, Quong married a young Englishwoman Margaret Scarlett. Together they had two sons and four daughters.

Quong embraced the British-Australian way of life, later living in a Victorian mansion at Ashfield in Sydney’s Inner West and raising his children as Christians. He also had a passion for Robert Burns (1759-96), Scotland’s national bard, and wore a Scottish kilt and learnt to play the bagpipes.

Yet Quong worked hard to protect the Chinese living in the colony and acted as de facto ambassador to China. In 1894, he was appointed a mandarin of the fourth degree by China’s Emperor for his efforts. In August 1902, Quong was savagely assaulted by an intruder in his office in the Queen Victoria Markets. He never fully recovered from the attack and died of pleurisy at his Ashfield home on July 26, 1903. Thousands of mourners attended his funeral to pay their respects.

In 1998, a commemorative bust sculpture of Quong Tart was unveiled in Hercules Street, Ashfield. His Ashfield residence has now been converted into an aged care home for Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking residents.

Courtesy Mitchell Library, State of New South Wales.