Here be dragons

FOR a drought-afflicted city like Melbourne, having a dragon's lair well stocked with giant sequined beasts can only be a good thing. Chinese dragons control the heavens and traditionally bring good rain so yesterday's frolic around the city's streets by an 80-legged dragon should help keep the dams filling.

Melbourne's Chinese dragons usually only emerge from their Chinatown lair twice yearly for the Moomba and Chinese New Year celebrations but yesterday the largest was out to greet Premier John Brumby (below) as he opened the newly refurbished Chinese Museum.

The museum features five floors of Chinese-Australian artefacts, a dragon gallery, a below-ground interactive mining exhibit and Bridges of Melbourne stories recounting personal experiences of Chinese immigrants.

A group of lion dancers provided a highlight of yesterday's ceremony by regurgitating chunks of chomped lettuce on to the startled Premier and other VIPS on stage, leaving one lettuce leaf dangling comically from the microphone. The incident can't do any harm to the premier's hope of re-election as lion dances traditionally bring good luck and ward off evil spirits.

Melbourne happens to be the dragon capital of Australia with four active and retired processional monsters, including the Millennium Dragon, which boasts the largest head of any processional dragon in the

world.

The city has been kind to dragons. The commissioning of the Millennium Dragon's predecessor, Dai Loong, has been credited with reviving the lost craft of dragon-making in the Chinese city of Foshan in the late '70s.

Cultural suppression had put a halt to Chinese dragon production from 1949 so samples from Melbourne's parade dragons were delivered to the descendant of a dragon craftsman and the industry was revived.

The dragons add colour to the museum, but it is the poignant tales of the Chinese community's history in Melbourne that are moving.

The story of Chinese migration to Victoria began during the goldrush in the 1850s when they arrived mostly as contract labourers and were often met with resentment. By 1858, 42,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived and many later ended up living in boarding houses in Little Bourke Street.

After the gold rush, some moved on while others set up businesses and lived in the Little Bourke Street precinct. For the five decades that followed Federation, the Chinese population declined due to the White Australia Policy, with numbers hitting a low of 9000 in the 1940s and the area became a loading bay for Bourke Street stores.

The museum's deputy chairman Mark Wang's own family history in Australia began in 1857 when his maternal great grandfather came to Australia in search of gold. His family have lived or run businesses in the Chinatown area for four generations.

In the 1960s Melbourne realised the tourist potential of the Little Bourke precinct and Chinatown was created. Mr Wang's father, David, led the push.

"My father was the first Chinese councillor with the City of Melbourne and he proposed Chinatown be recognised as a tourist precinct and was also behind installing the arches and the lighting," he said.

Melbourne's Chinese population began to increase from the 1970s to about 250,000 in Melbourne today. Chinatown remains the social and cultural hub of the community even though the community has moved out of the city to the suburbs.

Melbourne's Chinatown is certainly not the largest globally but it has retained the oldest Chinese streetscape remaining in the world, which the community hopes will be heritage-listed.

While listening to the immigrants' stories, Mr Wang was struck by the common experiences between people who arrived a century ago and today.

"I think there are a lot of lessons to be learnt between people who arrive now and people who arrived 100 years ago and that's the value of this heritage," he said.

"You find that they were lonely as migrants. They couldn't speak the language so they couldn't communicate. They were quite poor and they had to start from scratch. You sort of get to see what people who migrate to Australia now go through in their lives."

Kicking goals for the kids

A MIXED draft of sporting identities, comics and football fans converged on Crown Casino yesterday for the Shane Warne Foundation footy finals lunch.

Hamish Blake, Andy Lee, Garry Lyon, Sam Newman, Aaron Hamill, Mick Molloy, Fifi Box and Jason Akermanis (pictured) were among the well-known faces at the foundation's annual fund-raiser.

Guests were treated to a retro menu of Shane Warne's culinary favourites, including ham and pineapple pizza, nachos with guacamole and sour cream, sausage rolls and beef bourguignon pies.

Despite the charitable nature of the occasion, Warne refused to be photographed by an Age photographer at the event.

The hot topic of the day among the finals-feverish crowd was Akermanis's upcoming book, with the dumped Western Bulldog controversially timing the launch for the eve of the preliminary final on September 17.

Around 600 people forked out $250 each to attend the event which raised money for several children's charities.