Unearthing the history of Chinese gold miners on the beaches of northern New South Wales requires about the same patience needed to find specks of the precious metal in the sand.

Theresa Gilroy dedicated her archaeology thesis to digging up this little-known past after first learning of it more than a decade ago.

"I started to research it and there is very, very little on it at all," she said.

The former Southern Cross University researcher said Chinese migrants first appeared on the north coast as pastoral workers on newly established sheep and cattle properties in the late 1840s.

Within a decade there were at least six Chinese mining settlements, referred to as Chinatowns, where they built stone and wood structures for washing alluvial gold.

"Chinese men were also sand mining at Evans Head in the 1870s and had their camp at Chinamans Beach," she said.

"I don't think it was ever actually recorded as a site; I think it's more come from local stories passed on through generations that were eventually written down."

Chinamans Beach is located at Evans Head on the NSW North Coast. ( Supplied )

Evidence from the archives

References to Chinese gold mining on the Northern Rivers can be found scattered in historical books and archived newspaper clippings.

An article published in the Northern Star newspaper in 1939 said "it was the quest for gold that first attracted white men to the Evans Head district, and it was the success of a party of New Zealanders that directed the attention of Captain Paddon, the district's first settler, to the area".

It said the value of the alluvial gold was a "jealously guarded secret" but that it had been "reliably stated" that between Chinamans Beach and the surrounding areas, "many thousands of pounds worth of gold" were produced, yielding an estimated £100,000 (roughly the equivalent of $24 million today).

An article in the Northern Star in 1939 outlines the history of gold mining on Chinamans Beach. ( Supplied )

The article said there were more than 300 Chinese miners working Chinamans Beach — a likely exaggeration according to historian Michael Williams from the Chinese Australian Historical Society.

"Three hundred would be an extraordinary number on one beach in that area at that time and would have been more widely reported I suspect," he said.

In her book Men And A River, Louise Tiffany Daley said the population in 1871 for the entire Richmond River District was 4,528.

"All were British or Australian-born except for 18 Americans, five Frenchmen, 68 Germans and 98 Chinese."

What's in a name?

Mr Williams said it was important not to take the name of a location as evidence by itself of Chinese history.

He said historically people had been infatuated with the idea that Chinese people were digging for gold.

"Very often a name like Chinamans Beach is likely to be attributed simply because they're looking for an exotic connection.

"Whenever they see things like the remains of gold mines scattered around, people will often say, 'Well, that must be Chinese gold mining', but in actual fact there's no distinction between Chinese gold mining and European gold mining."

Several newspaper articles, however, refer to Chinamans Beach in Evans Head as far back as 1910, which would have been in living memory of Chinese gold mining from the 1850s to the late 1870s.

Chinamans Beach is a popular spot south of the Evans River in northern NSW. ( Supplied )

What brought Chinese miners to Australia?

National Museum of Australia curator Karen Schamberger said people from around the world flocked to the goldfields in Victoria and New South Wales in the mid 19th century, including a large number of Chinese people who worked as free or indentured labourers.

Dr Schamberger said life at the time was difficult in China, particularly in the southern provinces, which had been destabilised by the opium trade, the importation of Western manufactured goods and the impact of the Taiping Rebellion.

"People needed to get out, and this coincided with the discoveries of gold in California, south-eastern Australia and also in New Zealand in the mid 19th century."

By the end of the century, the number of Chinese people in Australia had grown from 10,000 to between 60,000 and 90,000.

Sun Kai was thought to be one of the last Chinese miners on the goldfields near Tenterfield in the 1930s. ( Supplied )

As the central gold mines in Victoria and New South Wales were exhausted, the Chinese miners worked their way up the east coast in search of new claims.

Dr Schamberger said they tended to work in groups of six or eight, while the Europeans and Americans would have one or two people per claim.

"It's the working cooperatively at a larger scale that the Europeans found difficult to understand," she said.

Chinese miners would work methodically across a claim, she said, while European miners tended to dig a hole, and if they failed to find gold, would move onto another site.

"That meant the Chinese could then take on those claims and they were finding gold where Europeans had thought there wasn't any — it was really a different way of working."

More than just gold mining

Once the gold mines were exhausted, Dr Schamberger said some miners returned to China, some relocated to different goldfields, while others stayed and set up businesses.

"Around Evans Head they moved into market gardening, which is quite common because many of the people who moved out here were from agricultural regions," she said.

"They knew how to grow vegetables and farm, so they went back to something that they were used to — and they often provided food for entire towns."

Mr Williams said market gardening also provided the flexibility for Chinese miners to periodically return home as the land only had to be leased.

"They were mostly men leaving their families back in the villages, and so what they wanted was something they could work at for a couple of years and then leave when they wanted to go back home and see their families and father children, and then they would return," he said.

Many Chinese migrants left troubles in their home country in search of a new life. ( National Museum of Australia/Australia-China Friendship Society )

'Whitewashed' from history

Mr Williams said it was important to remember that Chinese people in Australia "did far more than digging for gold".

He said early Chinese migrants also played a crucial role in shipbuilding in Cairns, scrub cutting and opera.

But the White Australia policy resulted in much of this history being hidden, he said.