Australian
Curriculum General Capability:
Numeracy
1. It is important for the Police
officers to know which formula is used for what and how to apply them, as
well as to figure out values for the variables. Police officers are trained
to use mathematics in their field and can take extended training to work in
Forensics or Accident Reconstruction.
Australia has
strict laws about drinking alcohol and driving, with the legal limit set at
0.05 blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Learners and probationary
license-holders must have a 0.00 BAC.
That is, any measurement higher than
0.05 makes driving illegal, and drivers can be charged or fined. The
measurement of .05 means .05 grams of alcohol per 100mL of blood.
The mouth
absorbs alcohol, so the alcohol on the driver’s breath is related to the
amount of alcohol in their blood. The ratio of breath alcohol to blood
alcohol is 2100 to 1 (this ratio can vary slightly depending on the
individual). This means that the alcohol content of 2100 milliliters of
exhaled air is the same as the amount of alcohol in 1 milliliter of blood.
Alcohol is then expressed as a percentage amount in the blood, where the
legal limit is .05%.
Police officers use a breath test called a Breathalyzer
to determine the BAC of a driver they suspect may have been drinking. And
although the Breathalyzer does most of the maths, it is important to
understand how it works and the maths behind it.
2. Using the
Drinkwise
Calculator, calculate different drinks and their alcohol content.
3. Explain to a partner the information provided here. Did you have the
correct information.
Did any of this information confuse you? Make you aware?
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Critical and creative thinking Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Personal and social capability
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Literacy
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: ICT Capability
1. Develop a personal profile of a few of your friends or family. Include details that
you would find in a police report such as fingerprints, mug shots, criminal
history, etc. [Make
up most of the details yourself so you can make them seem like real
criminals!]
2. Create a
WANTED Poster for one of your
"criminals" using this
generator:
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Critical and creative thinking
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Intercultural Understanding
Cooperative
Learning Activity
Teacher
This activity involves the Expert Jigsaw Strategy. The
whole process can be found
here.
Lessons: 3 - 4x45 mins
Subjects: English, Media Studies, Australian History (Gold Rush)
Students
1. Form groups of 3 - 5
students. You are going to undertake the Expert Jigsaw Strategy to complete
this activity. Here is a visual representation of what you are to do:
2. You are to read and view the following articles and
video clip to get an impression of Fook Shing, Australia's first Chinese
Detective.
There are 5 Expert Groups - 1 - 5.
Decide which students in your group are 1 - 5. They will
research the separate resources for their group only.
Group 1:
You are to read and take notes from the following article: written by
Benjamin Wilson Mountford, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic
University
Group 2: You are to study the
following newspaper article retrieved from Trove (digitalised newspaper
clippings). You are to read and take notes. The focus is who is Fook
Shing?
A few weeks ago Fook Shing, the Chinese detective, appeared at tho
city police court to prosecute a fellow-countryman named Ah Gow,
then just released from gaol, for abusive language. Ah Gow weent to
Fook Shing to demand 3s. 1/2 d. and a meerschaum pipe, which were
taken from him when he was sent to gaol, being
sent to and fro between the detective office and Fook Shing's
residence, Ah Gow addressed Fook Shing in choice celestial
vernacular.
Fook Shing however upon that occasion failed to convince the bench
of the truth of his version of the story, and the case was
dismissed. While it was being heard some irregularities in
connection with thedisposition of the
money taken from Ah Gow came to light, which have since been under
the investigation of the police authorities, and it was asserted
that the pipe had never been returned to the defendant at all. On
Tuesday the matter again cropped up in connection with a summons
case heard in the District Court, wherein Fook Shing was the
defendant, the charge being that be had illegally detained the pipe
in question.
Mr. F. Stephen appeared for the prosecution, and Mr. Albert Read for
the defence. Mr. Stephen, in stating the case, said that Ah Gow some
time in November last was sent down from Castlemaine
to Melbourne under a warrant of committal, and was remanded to gaol
from the watchhouse. The property on his person was taken from him
by the defendant, who signed the property-book for it in the usual
manuer. When Ah Gow was released from confinement he madeinquiries about the money and pipe that had been taken from
him, and found that the money had been received by Fook Shing from
Sergeant Pewtress, instead of having been forwarded to the gaol in
the usual manner.
Ah Gow then went to Fook Shing and demanded his money, when the
latter locked him up on a charge of using abusive language, the case
being subsequently dismissed, and Fook Shing compelled by the
authorities to pay over the money. In the course of his remarks Mr.
Stephen accused Fook Shing of purloining the pipe, but did not
pursue this line of argument after it was pointed out by the bench
that by so doing he virtually put the case out of court, the charge
being simply one of illegal detention.
Sergeant Pewtress deposed to the signature
in the property-book against the entry— " Property found on the
prisoner (Ah Gow)— Sundries, none ; money, 3s
1/2d."— being Fook Shing's. Fook Shing then gave his evidence, and
denied emphatically that he had received from detective O'Callagban,
who brought Ah Gow down from Castlemaine,
a meerschaum pipe belonging to the prisoner. All he received was 3s.
1/2Id.; with the sixpence he bought a loaf for the prisoner, and
returned him the change, one halfpenny, making the 3s. Od. entered
in the book.
The prosecutor was examined at
considerable length, his evidence in the first place being
interpreted by Ah Koun (who afterwards gave evidence for the
prosecution), but when cross-examined by Mr. Read he replied in
English, it having been discovered that his knowledge of that
language was sufficiently extensive to enable him with little
difficulty to do so. His statement was that when Fook Shing took tho
3s. 6d. from him he also took a meerschaum pipe, which he had bought
at Castlemaine a long time ago for 14s.
When arrested at Castlemaine the pipe and money wore taken from him,
and afterwards returned to him.
He came down in the train with detective O'Callaghan, but did not
smoke as his hands were fastened. Witness was question as to whether
O'Callaghan had had the pipe in the train, but evidently did not
understand what was meant, at one time saying " he did not take it,"
and again "O'Callaghan did not have it, but he saw it in my hand,
and gave it back to me."
He was not searched at the detective
office, but at the watchhouse. The money had been returned to him,
but not the pipe. Fook Shing was recalled and denied that he had
searched the prisoner at the watchhouse; it was at the detective
office, _ in the presence of detectives Moore, McMinn, and
O'Callaghan. Ho (witness) signed no sheet of paper at the detective
office — only the book at the watchhouse.
Mr. Stephen here called attention to the fact that when the case at
the city court was heard it was sworn by detective Moore that Fook
Shing signed a sheet at the detective office, which was afterwards
lost. Ah Koun (the interpreter) deposed that on two occasions Fook
Shing admitted to him having had the pipe. Once witness met Fook
Shing in street and, in reply to a question, he said, "Oh, it was an
old pipe not worth anything, and I chucked it away". On another
occasion, when asked why he did not return the
pipe and the money, he said, " I got the money right enough, but the
pipe was an old one not worth anything, and I throw it away."
Since then witness had asked Fook Shing if
the matter was settled yet, when he replied, "No, the case," meaning
the dispute, " is not worth anything." Mr. Road made no defence,
saying he thought it unnecessary to take up the time of the bench
with a reply to the uncorroborated statement of tho prosecutor.
The bench took a different view of the case,
and ordered Fook Shing to deliver up the pipe to Ah Gow, or its
value, l4s., and to pay one guinea costs ; in default of payment a
warrant of distress to issue.
Group 3: You are to watch the video or the video
clips of Peter Cox's 'New Gold Mountain'. As series creator Peter Cox
explains, the historical Fook Shing offered a unique position from which to
tell his story.
“What
was interesting about him is he definitely rode this kind of morally
ambiguous line in the way that he operated,” he tells us. “He just
felt very human straight away; he wasn’t a mythologised character that was
symbolic of something. He reacted the way a human being would react in a
position that’s really difficult, where he’s kind of trying to survive. On
one hand he’s employed by his European bosses, and he needs the money to
live, but on the other hand he’s arresting Chinese people, so he’s kind of
riding a line.”
SBS' New Gold Mountain
featuring Fook Shing. Leung Wei Shing is a fictional character, but he and
his milieu are based on real people and actual historical occurrences; in
Shing’s specific case, he’s derived from Fook Shing, a man who came to the
Goldfields to find his fortune like so many others, but wound up becoming
Australia’s first Chinese detective. (Source: SBS)
Yoson An (left - playing Fook Shing or Leung Wei
Shing) and Chris Masters Mah (centre) in the Chinese camp. (Source: SBS)
"On the dusty Ballarat goldfields, a group of
Chinese miners find the body of a white woman dressed in Chinese clothing.
Knowing what deadly consequences might result if the authorities think a
Chinese person murdered a white woman, they hide the body. So begins “New
Gold Mountain,” a new historical drama on SBS that has quickly become
popular for its fresh take on a familiar element of Australia’s past.
It’s always hard to work out what makes a show resonate but during a
pandemic era when anti-Asian racism has flared, and as the relationship
between Australia and its biggest trading partner continue to deteriorate,
it sometimes feels like Chinese Australians have become defined by being
stuck between two countries, with our belonging a perpetual question. And
“New Gold Mountain” provides a new — or rather an old — lens to look at the
question, reminding us that while uneasy race relations are nothing new,
neither are the contributions Chinese people have been making in Australia
for over 200 years.
The four part mini-series, which premiered this week, is inspired by real
and untold stories of Australia’s goldfields in the 1850s: primarily of the
24,000 Chinese miners who came to Victoria to try their luck, but also of
women running newspapers, Indigenous trackers and more. Though at its core
it’s a murder mystery, race and social roles are undercurrents informing
characters’ actions and interactions, and the story has drawn interest from
those who’ve traditionally not seen themselves represented in depictions of
Australia’s history.
“The gold rush is such a powerful and classic Australian story, and in many
ways that moment was the origin story of multiculturalism in this country,”
said Corrie Chen, the show’s director.
“Chinese people are part of the foundational story of Australia,” added Ms.
Chen, who was born in Taiwan and grew up in Australia. “We’ve been here
almost the same time as white settlers. We should have had almost as much of
a shot of imprinting that on the Australian psyche, but we haven’t.”
Yoson On plays Shing in the “New Gold
Mountain”Credit...SBS
The history of Chinese miners is usually best known — if it’s known at all —
through the racist attacks they suffered on the goldfields like in the
Buckland and Lambing Flat riots. But, as “New Gold Mountain” highlights,
they were also actively lobbying against discriminatory policies, navigating
complex relationships with their backers in China, and wearing cowboy hats
and being detectives — the main character in the play, Shing, is based on
the real life Fook Shing, Victoria’s first Chinese detective.
As is the case in the show, on the actual goldfields, Fook Shing acted as a
bridge between the authorities and the Chinese community, as well as running
a successful theater and brickworks. According a historian’s account:
“Wealthy, connected and well represented in court, he kept a pistol under
his pillow for when extralegal methods were required to protect his
followers.”
When Chinese miners left the goldfields and settled in Melbourne in what
would eventually become its Chinatown, Fook Shing went with them, becoming
appointed a member of the Victoria police and responsible for policing the
Chinese community.
It would have been a position that came with status and recognition, but
which Ms. Chen imagines would have been fraught: “I just think in that role
at that time — you would have just ended up being an outsider to both, and
someone seen as a bit of a traitor to the birth country you’re from.”
In the show, this comes across in a morally-ambiguous character whose desire
for recognition and acceptance by the British upper-class sometimes comes up
against the urge to protect his own community. More broadly, “New Gold
Mountain” is a story of people trying carve out a place in an unfamiliar,
often hostile environment in whatever way they can — from throwing together
cultural festivals with whatever they have on hand in poor imitations of the
real thing, to ingratiating themselves with the people in power to get
ahead, sometimes at the expense of others.
“The thing that was very relatable and the motivational fuel of the show is
the ambition and desperation of the Chinese miners coming here,” something
that carries through in the Chinese diaspora’s experience of assimilation to
this day, said Ms. Chen.
“I think for Shing, and one of the big questions of the show, is how do you
fit into this country and how do you belong in this country? That’s
something migrants have to navigate their whole lives: how do you hold onto
that duality among your desire to really belong to a community?”
Group 5:
Reworking
the tailings: new gold histories and the cultural landscape
Benjamin Mountford, University of Oxford
Keir Reeves, Monash University
Read and take notes about Fook Shing.
Reworking the
tailings: new gold histories and
the cultural landscape Benjamin Mountford, University of Oxford
Keir Reeves, Monash University
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41236354.pdf
p. 32
Fook Shing and the
Bendigo diggings
...the authors are currently engaged in a research project that
centres on the story of Fook Shing, a prominent goldfields
personality, who settled in Victoria and served as a police
detective in the years after the rush. By taking a complementary
approach and synthesising a range of historical sources, we are
attempting to unearth some of the complex patterns of social
interaction that characterised Fook Shing’s life on the Bendigo
diggings in the 1850s. The aim of this approach is to seek out a
more detailed understanding of one Chinese-Australian’s goldfields
experience and to draw on that individual narrative to uncover new
insights into the hidden history of the region.
For the historian seeking a personal window to the Chinese in
colonial Victoria, Fook Shing (sometimes Bay Fok Sing, Fok Sing,
Fook Ching, Fook Sing, Fook Shing and finally Henry Fook Shing) has
left behind a wealth of material. Though a more detailed examination
of Fook Shing’s personal narrative forms the basis of our broader
study, a brief survey of his involvement in the Bendigo community
during the 1850s provides an indication of the sophistication of
Fook Shing’s goldfields experience. From a methodological
perspective, Fook Shing’s personal story also offers a number of
insights into how a biographical history might complement a reading
of Bendigo’s cultural landscape.
Fook Shing was a ubiquitous figure across the colony of Victoria
throughout much of his professional life. A native of Guangzhou, he
arrived in Victoria via Adelaide in January 1854, making his way
quickly to the goldfields at Bendigo. Like so many of the Chinese
gold diggers who arrived in Victoria in the 1850s, his family farmed
the land in troubled Guangdong province. As rapid population growth
and political instability shook the region, Fook Shing joined the
mass of his countrymen seeking new opportunities abroad. He took
work as a ship’s steward and a serving boy at Singapore, reaching
Victoria as his countrymen began to arrive en masse.
At Bendigo, Fook Shing took an active role in the rapidly expanding
local community. As both a formative leader of the Bendigo Sheathed
Sword society, a triad organisation representing his Sze Yup
countrymen, and a headman in the Victorian government’s Chinese
Protectorate system, he established significant local authority. He
took an active role in cultural and political life, attacking
Christian missionaries and their efforts to convert Chinese diggers,
campaigning against the Victorian government’s efforts to restrict
Chinese immigration, and playing a prominent role in the erection of
a Chinese temple. Fook Shing was also involved in a range of
business ventures on the goldfields. As Protectorate employment
declined in the later 1850s, he began touring a successful Chinese
theatre company across central Victoria and opened a store at
Ballarat. Ongoing research shows he may also have been the ‘Fok
Sing’ involved in the construction of a large brick kiln uncovered
at Bendigo’s PepperGreen Farm. By the end of the 1850s, Fook Shing
had become a naturalised Briton, and had purchased a house and land
package across from the government reserve in Bendigo.
For a snapshot of the complexity of Fook Shing’s goldfields
narrative, we turn our attention to an episode that took place in
1856. On 3 November of that year, at Castlemaine’s Primitive
Methodist Chapel, the Reverend William Young delivered a report on
the local Chinese mission. Frustrated by what he perceived to be a
prevalence of idolatry in the goldfields camps, Young castigated the
Chinese for their lukewarm response to Christian teaching,
expressing great disappointment that ‘the seeds of divine truth
… [had made] no deep religious impression’. Elaborating on the
failure, he recalled a recent visit to the Clinkers Hill Chinese
camp, where he had been ridiculed by two headmen. Most vocal was a
leader from Bendigo:
When he was told there was but one God,
he replied—Englishmen may worship one God, we Chinese worship
hundreds of gods. When I offered him a copy of the bible he rejected
it with disdain, and said he could not read or understand that book,
and that he liked Chinese books better.
As Young left the camp in defeat, the headman called out to him:
You sir, go about teaching the Chinese
with a view of making them Christians. I can tell you a very easy
method by which you can do that; just promise to give each man £3
a-week, and, I will pledge myself to bring you fifty Chinese
Christians.
Though the Bendigo headman is not named, Young’s detractor was
almost certainly Fook Shing, who made similar anti-Christian
affirmations elsewhere. His identity is affirmed by a number of
factors, such as Young’s assertion that the headman he encountered
at Clinkers Hill had ‘taken a prominent part in the erection of
the Joss house at Long Gully ... Bendigo and was champion of
idolatry there’.
This vibrant episode is one of many from Fook Shing’s personal story
that provide the historian with a vignette of day-to-day life in the
Chinese camps. As well as raising a number of questions about the
influence of missionary activity and Christian teaching on the
Victorian Chinese communities, Fook Shing’s treatment of Young
prompts considerations of broader patterns of cultural transmission
and community identification.
By taking his personal perspective as our focal point, we are able
to approach these complex questions at the micro-level, taking into
account relationships between the individual and the collective.
Fook Shing’s actions at the Clinkers Hill Camp can thus be read as
an expression of Chinese community resistance to missionary
endeavour but also understood as a concerted effort by a government
employee to emphasise his Chinese cultural affiliations and to
downplay his role as a colonial agent.
By setting himself in opposition to those Asian-Australians (like
Young) actively promoting Western values, he fortified his own
position amongst the parochial diggings Chinese. The suggestion that
Fook Shing’s anti-Christian stance rested on political (rather than
spiritual) foundations is supported by his readiness to marry
spinster Ellen Mary Fling in a Christian ceremony, held at
Melbourne’s Congregational and Independent Church in July 1857.
Though only touched upon here, Fook Shing’s story demonstrates the
capacity of personal ethno-history to substantially enrich our
understanding of colonial society. In contrast with the enduring
image of the faceless, downtrodden Chinese digger (or the usual
counterpoint, the flamboyant, urban Chinese entrepreneur) which
dominates Australian history, his goldfields narrative provides a
framework for interrogating a number of long-standing perceptions of
the Chinese in 19th-century Australia. Neither simply ‘collaborator’
nor pro-Chinese ‘chief ’, he offers a more complex, pragmatic image
of the Chinese on the diggings. His readiness to adapt to Australian
society and commitment to carving out a place in his adopted home
provides a personal dimension to ongoing arguments over the
sojourning mentality of Chinese goldseekers.
3. When you have finished your researching in your expert
group, go back to your home group and share what you have learnt about Fook
Shing.
4. Collectively form an overview of Fook Shing, the
Goldfields, the role of the Chinese, the role of the White Colonists, the
role of the Indigenous peoples from the readings and videos that you have
seen.
You are to also ask 8 questions from the Question Quadrant - two from each
quadrant:
4. Create a presentation to show to ONE other group on
Who was Fook Shing? and state your questions that you would like
answered.
5. Reflection.
"Who was Fook Shing?"
6. Extra for
Secondary
students
"How does the history of Fook Shing reflect what happens
today to Chinese Australians?"
Use the following resources to answer
this question in your home groups.
2. Write down
the facts; pros and cons; and, arguments put forward in this article.
Compare notes amongst the group and discuss the implications - to society
and you in particular.
For example,
How do you
feel about your face being in a database somewhere? If you have a
driver's licence, then your face is in a database.
What about
the possibility of your face being associated with another person's
details - in other words, identity theft?
3. Why is regulating FRT so
necessary? Who should do this regulating? Why? Why not?
4. Have you thought about the
future use of FRT? What are the possibilities? Discuss as a group.
5.
Reflection.
Did you pick up on any pros or
cons that you had not thought of? What about implications?
5. Using
Indigenous Australia, five students
[one from each team or group] are to become "The Sages". Each Sage is to
select ONE different person - one Native Mounted Police or Trooper from the
list below - and carry out intensive research about this person. They should
be given some time to do this - eg. be prepared for the following lesson.
6. Carry out
"Circle the Sage" strategy. This strategy entails one person "the Sage"
knowing all the information about, in this case, a NMP or Trooper, and
delivering this information to a small team - one student from each group.
This can be done as creatively as possible.
The rest of the team of 5
goes to a separate Sage and learns all about a Trooper from their Sage. The
students are to then go back to their group/team and re-tell what they have
learnt from "The Sage". At the end of the session, the team should know all
about each Trooper.