Senior Secondary

Forgotten Group at Sovereign Hill

A group of Year 10 History students have been studying Early Modern Asia this term. This study goes through the history of China, Japan, India and Chin State between 1750-1918. Students have been learning historical connections of how the Opium War broke out between Britain and China’s Qing Empire, how Japan was able to modernise/westernise through its Meiji Restoration, how the British East India Company impacted the lives of local Indians and how the people of the Chin State got to have their own identity through various historical events that happened especially in the past 150 years or so.

As part of the bigger studies over different Asian ethnicities/nations, on Thursday 22 August, students had the privilege to visit Sovereign Hill to explore how the lives of early Chinese miners were here in Australia. These events were easily connected to some of the events we learned about in class such as the Taiping Rebellion (as many Chinese people fled the chaos to move overseas). Students not only got to learn about the historical context of how Chinese miners were able to come to Australia but also some of the consequences they had to go through as well. This was a valuable experience for students to see how historical events from textbooks would have actually unfolded in real life.

Everyone engaged really well with the discussion-based activity in the morning and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day with lots of other fun activities in the afternoon.

Special thanks to Steve Bouma for driving us and Natalie Thomas for coming with us.

Jae Park

Secondary Teacher