OUR walking tour provides opportunities to explore key locations in one of the oldest continuous Chinatowns in the world and its influence on history and culture in Australia. We provide students with multicultural identities, quizzes, food samples and activities as well as access to historic and contemporary locations including street art and architecture.
The Chinese New Year Festival is held in February each year. Celebrations feature traditional and contemporary Chinese cultural activities and festivities, dances, Chinese opera and singing, karaoke competitions, numerous stalls of culinary delights, arts and crafts, Feasting, firecrackers, Chinese chess competitions, lion dances, dragon parades, calligraphy and children’s events. Several lanes are illuminated. During the Dragon’s Awakening Ceremony, the Millennium Dragon parades through the streets of Melbourne starting in Little Bourke Street. Mabel and David Wang helped restore the craft of Dragon-making to the world when they assisted a town in China to build Dai Long, Melbourne’s millenial dragon.
SEE: PRICES & BOOKINGS
KEYNOTE PLACES
- Corrs Lane in China town is the smallest lane in Melbourne and connects to the Greek Precinct
- Corner Market Lane is the Chinese Mission and the former Kuo Ming Tang building. The lane houses the famous Flower Drum restaurant founded by the Lau family.
- China Square holds the Heavenly Gates of Nanking, the monument to China’s first president and the Cohen brother’s cabinet-making building, now the Chinese museum.
- Sun Yat Sen memorial.
- Three historic dragons of Melbourne are housed in the Chinese Museum. Other dragons can be found engraved and marked around the city.
- The Chinese warehouse 1888 is at 112-114 Little Bourke Street, a historic boom period 1887 owned by ship-owner and philanthropist Sum Kum Lee. The name of the architect is in the lane beside it: Charles De Lacey Evans.
- At 116-18 is a former Chinese Gospel Hall, later Ancient Times House and former home of the Archaeological Association.
- The Chinese Evangelist Hall is corner Lt Bourke and China square.
- Croft Lane is the former home of stables, ragged schools, brothels, brawls and gambling dens. It is also the rear of the Chinese Mission Church once led by famous civil rights campaigner Reverend Cheong. Today it is also a well-known Street art venue.
- Waratah lane is the home of gambling halls and Squizzy Taylor two-up schools.
- Queen Victoria centre is the home of the former suffragette hospital, today’s Women’s Centre and multicultural food courts.
- On the corner of Heffernan Lane and Lt Bourke Street is the beautiful and tiny Chinese Methodist Church 1865.
- At 11 Heffernan Lane is an early 1890s purpose-built Chinese restaurant, the Chung Wah, a former gathering place for bohemian Melbourne.
- The oldest Chinese temple in Australia Num Pon Soon 1861 is at 200 – 202 Little Bourke Street.
- Celestial Lane is the location of early Chinese boarding houses, 15-17, 16-18 by the See Yup Society.
- Tattersall Lane is a glimpse of old Melbourne before the recent boom. People from many ethnic communities lived in Chinatown. It was an early residential area for low income immigrants.9
OTHER IMPORTANT CHINATOWN HERITAGE
- Early social welfare reforms
- Melbourne boom, 1920s heritage and modern architecture
- Street Art in the Lanes
- Early Christian Missions
- The Labour movement
- Suffragette movement
- Outcasts of Slum Melbourne e.g 1920 crime eg gambling, sly grog, Squizzy Taylor etc.
- Greek precinct Lonsdale Street
- Theatre District