Chinese Market Gardeners

When people talk about Parramatta’s history, we hear about governors, colonial buildings, and early farmers. But just as important were the hands in the soil-the Chinese market gardeners who fed the town.

This talk tells a different story: how one Chinese market-gardener family turned a small patch of earth into a source of intergenerational abundance.

A century ago, Chinese vegetable growers were a familiar sight across the district. Speaking Cantonese, they supplied fresh produce, worked difficult land, and became part of everyday life. Yet their stories rarely appear in official histories. Today, the gardens are gone. Only a few descendants remain.

Drawing on oral histories, site visits, family memories, and local archives in and out of Parramatta, this illustrated talk reconstructs the lives of these growers—how they worked the land, supported their families, and quietly shaped the city’s past. It reveals a larger truth: Chinese market gardeners were, like earlier agricultural pioneers, foundational builders of Parramatta whose knowledge of the land and contributions to the community have long been overlooked.

Dr Christopher Cheng is a multilingual oral historian whose Cantonese, English, and Mandarin recordings are preserved at the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia. He leads Listening to Cantonese Growers: Re-telling Parramatta’s Past, a City of Parramatta Cultural Grant (History, Culture and Stories) project administered by the Chinese Heritage Association of Australia.

Burnside Gardens Community Centre, 3 Blackwood Place, Oatlands, 2117, View Map