The Big Lotus Flower

Bendigo's Chinese history is not decorative. Thousands of Chinese miners came to the Bendigo goldfields from the 1850s, many walking from Robe in South Australia to avoid the Victorian poll tax levied on arrivals by sea. They were subject to sustained legal discrimination and periodic violence, and they stayed, built, and remained. The Golden Dragon Museum holds the processional dragons, including Loong – believed to be the oldest complete imperial dragon in the world – and Sun Loong, which carried the Easter parade for decades.

Dai Gum San means Big Gold Mountain, the Chinese name for the goldfields.

The lotus is the right plant for the precinct. It grows from mud into clean water and flowers above it, and in Buddhist tradition it stands for exactly that progression. It is also a real feature of the classical gardens the precinct contains.

That makes this one of the very few objects in this catalogue drawn from a tradition other than British-Australian roadside advertising. It is not selling produce or marking a highway; it belongs to a cultural precinct that has been continuously maintained by a community for well over a century.

Nothing located supplies any date at all, the maker's identity, its size and the materials.