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Ah Wah

One character to win the imagination of Overnighters has been Ah Wah.

It all started when listener Jac, who provides the daily Jac-A-Nac, listed an 1890s report from the Richmond Guardian.

From the Melbourne Observer, September 2004

The night-by-night discovery of the life of this Chinese market gardener began when 3AW ‘Overnighters’ host Keith McGowan read an 1890 Richmond Chronicle news item
about a ‘murderous attack’ on poor Ah Wah.
The newspaper article told graphically of how stone carter William Taylor threw a bottle at Ah Wah in Chapel Street, striking him on the head, and causing critical injuries.
Local policeman Constable Robinson went in pursuit of Taylor, ‘who was captured after a smart chase around the quarries’.
Somehow this 1890 story caught the imagination of 21st Century listeners who went on their own detective hunt worthy of the Missing Persons’ Bureau.

Did Ah Wah recover, they wanted to know. Did he have a family? What happened in his life?
Listeners hunted the Internet, microfiche records of early Victoria, even cemetery records ... phoning in their discoveries to the McGowan program.
One listener, Jac, was even able to produce a photograph of Ah Wah from his 1901 naturalisation.
It seems that until World War II, all people of Asian-Chinese heritage were finger-printed and photographed because it was said ...'you cannot tell one from the other'...especially when there was much gold for the taking.

Ah Wah was born in China on April 28, 1868. He was a market gardener in Newton Street, Richmond,which later housed the Richmond Brewery ... and even the Melbourne Observer newspaper.
Ah Wah later moved to country Victoria. Some oif his family changed their name to Waugh. He died on May 21, 1941, aged 73. He was buried at the Springvale Necropolis Chinese Monumental Section, with arrangements handled by Raybould and Drever of Elsternwick. Rest in peace, Ah Wah.

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