A little-known slice of history is tucked away in the Victorian alps — the story of how a Chinese settler helped shape one of Australia's favourite beverages: beer.

William Panlook was the son of a storekeeper who was forced off the goldfields after Australia's first anti-Chinese race riot in the 1800s.

After his father's death, William, with the help of his family, maintained a hop garden in the region — a crop that not only yielded a successful business community, but a long-lasting legacy to Australia's beer production.

The search for gold

William's father, Panlook Snr, came to Australia from China in search of gold in the mid-1800s.

As the gold in the north-east Victorian diggings of Beechworth waned, surveyors travelled further and further out in search of new deposits.

"They discovered the Buckland gold field — and that saw a rush of 6,000 people toward the end of 1853," mining historian Andrew Swift says.

The Buckland Valley filled with Europeans, Americans and men from the British Isles. But it also filled with Chinese miners, and tensions between the different groups started to build.

Australia's first anti-Chinese race riot

Panlook Snr had set up shop on the Buckland — but it would soon come down in Australia's first anti-Chinese race riot.

"The authorities in Beechworth had been asked to send someone over there to sort [the tensions] out and it never happened," says local historian Diann Talbot.

"In the end the Bucklanders took matters into their own hands."

During the Buckland riots, thousands of Chinese miners were attacked and driven from the goldfields. ( Supplied: State Library NSW )

A meeting at a local hotel led to talk of taking up arms — which they did on July 4, 1857.

"The nature of the Buckland Valley is that it's really steep sided and everything associated with the mining is confined to this narrow strip of flat land, that is in some instances no more than 300 metres wide and extending for 14 miles," Mr Swift says.

"European miners got to the top end of the valley and started burning down tents, literally herding the Chinese down the valley.

"Further down the valley they got, the worse it got."

Panlook Snr left the Buckland flats. Though he would eventually return, he would never be the same.

"My mother told me the family story was that her grandfather, Panlook [Snr], had died of a broken heart because of what happened in the Buckland," says Panlook Snr's great-granddaughter, Carol Moore.

One family's legacy

William was 11 years old when his father died, leaving him to take care of his five siblings and his mother.

"My grandfather had a very tough life," Ms Moore says.

"There are stories of him when he was just a young boy walking for days with big sacks of rice on his back, to take up to his family, often having [to endure] racist taunts along the way."

Despite this, he went on to put his market gardening knowledge to use.

His family moved one valley over, to the Ovens Valley, and filled their small farm with a crop that had yet to take off in Australia — hops.

A big team was needed to grow and harvest hops at Rostrevor. ( Supplied: Jeff Carter Archive )

The green-yellow flower clusters of the hop plant are a bittering and flavouring agent for beer.

Established in the 1890s by William and his brother Ernest, Rostrevor Hop Gardens grew in acreage and crop yields.

And with bigger crop yields came a bigger harvest, and the need for a bigger workforce.

Building an empire

William put an annual ad in Melbourne's Argus newspaper for hop-pickers.

Toward the end of summer, Rostrevor Hop Gardens opened its gates to nearly a thousand pickers arriving on a special chartered train from Melbourne.

A make-shift town popped up for the duration of the harvest.

The Rostrevor Hop Gardens helped created a small community in its time. ( Supplied: Jeff Carter Archive )

The Panlooks built rudimentary huts for the pickers to sleep in as well as community kitchens, a school, a police station, and a great hall for entertainment and dancing.

The Gardens fostered a sense of community, as well as employing a lot of people in the region.

"It was huge what was achieved at Rostrevor Hop Garden," Ms Moore says.

"And it would never have been achieved without William."

Ms Moore says her grandfather had a visionary idea for the 1950s: beer grown from hops in the local valley and fresh mountain water.

"Which is the whole concept of craft beer now," she adds.

Rostrevor Hop Gardens, now owned by Hop Products Australia (HPA), grows hops varietals used in craft brews, such as Galaxy, Topaz, Vic Secret and Ella.

It is the largest hop farm in the Southern Hemisphere — and the gardens are still expanding.

HPA have just bought more of the Panlook's family property and the hop-growing poles are currently being put in the ground, ready for next season's harvest.

While remnants of the Chinese population in Buckland and the riot are few, the Panlook's legacy lives on.