Imagine a Sunday afternoon in a living room in Richmond, Melbourne. An elder calls their grandchild to dinner in Hakka, mixing in a few Portuguese words, and the grandchild responds in English. This elder was born in East Timor, has Chinese ancestry, and now lives in Australia. If someone asked, “Where are you from?”, they would probably have to think for a moment before knowing where to begin: Hakka, Chinese, East Timorese, or Australian?
Hakka people are generally regarded as a linguistic and cultural group within the Han Chinese, yet for centuries they were often called “guests” by the Han Chinese around them. “Guest” means you are not someone who was originally from here; “home” means you have already put down roots. This contradiction is one of the most important aspects of Hakka history to understand. And when these “guests” migrate again to Australia, how do they redefine where they belong? This question is in fact also an issue that Australian society faces today.
If They Are All Han Chinese, Why Were They Still Divided into “Local” and “Guest”?
The most common account of Hakka history is that their ancestors migrated south from the Central Plains because of warfare, passing through Jiangxi and Fujian to Guangdong, before later moving overseas. But modern research reminds us that this was not a group of people with a pure lineage moving in an orderly fashion. Rather, it was a community that gradually formed through migration, language and competition over local resources.
In parts of southern China, those who settled earlier were known as the “locals” (Punti), while those who arrived later were called “guests”. Flat and fertile land was already controlled by established clans, so later arrivals could only develop the hilly and mountainous areas. As a result, they developed close clan organisations and fortified communal residences for defence. In the mid-19th century, Guangdong also saw large-scale armed conflicts between the “locals” and “guests”. This shows that even when people belong to the same Han Chinese group, differences in language and clan, and competition for the same land, can turn people into “us” and “them”.
When a place could no longer accommodate everyone, another option was to leave again. Hakka history describes a group of people who repeatedly became outsiders, and how, wherever they went, they built a home again.
Hakka People Were Already in Australia’s Goldfields
During the Australian gold rush of the 1850s, large numbers of Chinese people travelled from southern China to Victoria and New South Wales. By 1861, there were more than 38,000 Chinese people across Australia, accounting for about 3.3% of the non-Indigenous population. Today, it is easy to collectively describe them as “Cantonese”, but the Chinese communities at the time were actually highly diverse.
Most came from the Siyi (Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui and Enping) and Sanyi areas of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, and spoke different Cantonese dialects. At the same time, there were also significant numbers of Hakka people. Historical records from Victoria’s goldfields show that Chinese miners spoke more than ten languages or dialects, with Hakka being one of them. Some Hakka people came from counties different from those of the Cantonese communities, and had differences in language, customs and clan networks. In fact, the existing “local–guest” tensions in southern China were sometimes also brought onto the goldfields, showing that even among Chinese people, internal boundaries still existed.
But what the colonial government and mainstream white society cared about was not whether you were Hakka, Siyi or Cantonese. To them, everyone was first and foremost “Chinese”. In 1855, Victoria began imposing an entry tax on Chinese people and established the Chinese Protectorate, placing Chinese people in designated camps for management. In 1861, serious anti-Chinese riots broke out at Lambing Flat in New South Wales, today known as Young. When the federation was established in 1901, the White Australia policy put exclusion into law.
This created a contrast in identity: in southern China, Hakka people were constantly reminded that they were different from the locals; in Australia, the outside society instead grouped everyone together, and into a group that was excluded. Internal boundaries that had originally been important suddenly became smaller in another country, but they did not disappear completely.
East Timorese Hakka: A Forgotten Part of History
By the latter half of the 20th century, Australia welcomed another particularly distinctive group of Hakka migrants: Chinese people from East Timor.
The history of Chinese people in East Timor can be traced back hundreds of years. Early Chinese merchants travelled to Timor through the sandalwood trade. Later, increasing numbers of Chinese people from southern China settled there, and Hakka people gradually became the main group within the local Chinese community. Before the Indonesian invasion in 1975, there were around 20,000 Chinese people in East Timor, many of them Hakka. They retained the Hakka language, Chinese festivals and family culture, but their places of birth, life experiences and social relationships had become closely connected with East Timor, forming an East Timorese Chinese community with its own history.
1975 was a turning point in the fate of this community. After Portugal ended its colonial rule, East Timor fell into political turmoil, and in December of the same year, Indonesian forces invaded. The Chinese community was severely affected. Some people were killed, property was destroyed, and large numbers of families fled. It is estimated that in the early stages of the invasion, several hundred Hakka people were killed in Dili alone.
Their escape routes were highly dispersed. Some first went to other parts of Indonesia; some travelled through Portugal, Macau or Taiwan before moving on to Australia; others arrived directly in Darwin by sea. After 1975, the first wave saw more than 2,500 East Timorese people, including large numbers of Hakka Chinese, arrive in Australia. Later, between 1979 and 1986, nearly 5,000 more people came to Australia through a special humanitarian program, most seeking to reunite with family members. They mainly settled in Sydney, while significant numbers also settled in Melbourne and Darwin. Areas around Richmond and Flemington in Melbourne gradually developed more visible communities.
These East Timorese Hakka migrants brought not only the Hakka language and Chinese culture, but also shared memories of war, exile and the independence movement. They established their own community organisations in Australia, worked to maintain their language and culture, and also actively participated in activities supporting East Timorese independence. Compared with other Chinese communities, they often placed greater emphasis on their distinctive identity as “East Timorese Hakka”, rather than simply integrating into the broader “Chinese” or “Chinese migrant” community.
This reminds us that “Hakka” has never necessarily been tied to a particular country or piece of land. What has truly been passed down is often language, family memory, and the community relationships that remain after repeated migrations.
Does the “Local–Guest” Divide Still Matter in Australia?
Australia’s Hakka people came at different times: pioneers of the gold rush, refugees from East Timor, and more recent international students and skilled migrants. Although they may all have Hakka backgrounds, they have not necessarily formed a unified Hakka community.
The reason lies in Australia itself. When survival is no longer dependent on “who arrived first” or “who is local”, this boundary loses its strongest foundation. Hakka people from the gold rush era gradually integrated into the broader Chinese and Australian societies over generations. East Timorese Hakka people formed closer communities through their shared language and experiences of exile, but the next generation likewise grew up in English-language education. In recent years, people with Hakka backgrounds have generally first entered the circles of new migrants or professionals.
Hakka people have not disappeared, but Hakka identity is becoming increasingly dispersed. Perhaps what is truly fading is not the Hakka people, but the boundary that once divided people into “locals” and “guests”.
However, saying that Australia has completely eliminated the distinction between locals and guests would be too optimistic. The original owners of this land are Indigenous peoples. From this perspective, all later arrivals, including Chinese people, are “guests” on this land. From the anti-Chinese discrimination of the gold rush era to the fact that some Asians are still told today to “go back to where you came from”, it shows that the question of “who counts as one of us” does not automatically disappear.
What the Hakka Story Can Teach Australia Today
Australia itself is a society made up of many migrant communities. Irish, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian and other communities that arrived at different times have all faced similar questions: after how many generations does an outsider stop being an outsider? Can a person belong to several places at the same time?
Hakka history does not offer a simple answer. What is interesting is that the name “Hakka”, which originally carried the meaning of being an outsider, was ultimately actively embraced by many people. A name that was once used to say “you are not from here” became “this is who I am”.
Today’s Australia does not need different ethnic groups from around the world to each form new Hakka-like communities. What we need more is a set of shared Australian values accumulated over generations and genuinely embraced by newcomers. These values are not the cultures, customs or lifestyles of our places of origin, but the basic principles that every migrant publicly expresses their commitment to and support for when becoming a citizen: democracy and the rule of law, equality of opportunity, respect for others, and the ability to live together amid differences.
How Should Australian Society Respond to Different “Hakka”?
Looking back at these different “Hakka”, we find that there is almost no single common form. This reminds us that there is no single “Hakka community” that can be understood through one label. Likewise, there is no single “Chinese community” or “migrant community”.
The question is not a binary choice between “assimilation or preserving everything separately”. The lesson from Hakka history is that identities can overlap. The real question is: what connects people across these different identities?
Two Pillars: Shared Values and Intercultural Contact
The first pillar is shared Australian values. This does not require everyone to give up their existing languages and cultures, but rather a set of basic principles that everyone is willing to follow and that everyone is protected by: democracy and the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, gender equality, respect for differences, and the “Fair Go” principle that everyone should have equal opportunities. Without a common framework, diversity can easily become everyone talking past one another. With it, Hakka people can speak Hakka while also saying: this is my country.
The second pillar is genuine intercultural contact between different communities. Going to school together, working together, volunteering and participating in community activities are often more effective than relying solely on slogans.
Intercultural Democracy
The concept of “intercultural democracy” being advocated today combines these two pillars: within a shared democratic and values-based framework, allowing different cultural communities not merely to coexist, but to genuinely interact with one another and participate together in public affairs.
Multiculturalism recognises and respects differences, and this is an important starting point. But if it stops at preserving communities separately, different groups may still remain unfamiliar with one another. Intercultural democracy needs to take one further step, allowing people from different backgrounds to discuss, decide and take responsibility together on an equal basis.
This is the direction that Australia needs to continue discussing today, and one that needs people to speak clearly about in parliament. When some people once again advocate for a “return to a single culture”, we need to remember that what can truly make society stable is not eliminating differences, but building a framework in which differences can coexist and move forward together.
Conclusion
The Hakka people’s centuries-long history of migration is a history of “how to go from being a guest to becoming one of the people who belong”. Australia does not need to repeat those costs.
When facing all kinds of newcomers and later arrivals, the answer is neither to make everyone the same nor to allow every group to build its own fortified village around itself. Instead, we need to establish two things: a set of Australian values that everyone follows together, and a social environment where different communities can genuinely meet, talk and work together. This is intercultural democracy.
In such a society, “local” and “guest” would no longer determine who has the right to stay, but would become roles of mutual respect. Everyone can be a guest in someone else’s home, and can also be a host in their own community, while becoming fellow travellers on this shared land.
If the centuries-long migration of the Hakka people tells us anything, it is perhaps this: “guest” and “home” were never necessarily two opposing things.