<P> The Anglo - Chinese unequal treaties signed after the First (1839--1842) and Second Opium Wars (1856--1860) also had their effect on Chinese in Australia and facilitated the practice of indentured labour . The British were conscious of not jeopardising the stipulation that British subjects be allowed to reside in the newly opened treaty ports in China . They made this stipulation reciprocal . So to avoid antagonizing the ruling Qing dynasty the British government didn't allow the Australian colonies to completely exclude Chinese peoples . </P> <P> Between 1848 and 1853, over 3,000 Chinese workers on contracts arrived via the Port of Sydney for employment in the NSW countryside . Resistance to this cheap labour occurred as soon as it arrived, and, like such protests later in the century, was heavily mixed with racism . Little is known of the habits of such men or their relations with other NSW residents except for those that appear in the records of the courts and mental asylums . Some stayed for the term of their contracts and then left for home, but there is evidence that others spent the rest of their lives in NSW . A Gulgong resident who died at age 105 in 1911 had been in NSW since 1841 while in 1871 the Keeper of Lunacy still required the Amoy dialect from his interpreters . </P> <P> In the 1850s and 1860s they saw the largest pre-federation migration of Chinese to Australia, with numbers peaking around the 40,000 mark . These numbers were only reached again after the abolition of the White Australia policy in 1973 . Gold was found at several places in Australia in 1851 but significant Chinese migration to join the diggers only began late in 1853 . </P> <P> Most of the people who were lured to Australia by the gold rush were from the Guangdong province . The Californian Gold Rush had been called' gold mountain' by the Chinese of Guangdong . The Australian rush was called' new gold mountain' and it was seen as a closer and possibly richer alternative to America . The conditions these men were leaving included overpopulation, the declining power of the Qing Dynasty, the devastation of the Taiping Rebellion, the local Canton Hakka - Punti clan wars and the detrimental effects the opium trade was having on society . </P>

When did the chinese gold miners come to australia