Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies

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Palmer River Goldfield Chinese Coin Hoard: New Evidence Challenging Its Authenticity
(Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora, The Australian National University, 2019) Zhu, Ron; Ritchie, Neville; Bagnall, Kate; Couchman, Sophie
This paper investigates the widely publicised claim by Keith Courtenay in the late 1970s that he had found a large hoard of 32,000 Chinese ©cash© (Chinese coins with a square hole in the middle) in the Palmer River Goldfield in far north Queensland, Australia. The discovery of the hoard was a momentous event at the time, but almost immediately some researchers raised reservations about its authenticity because of inconsistencies in Courtenay©s accounts of the circumstances that led to its discovery and its immense size in terms of the number of the coins, far greater than any other find of Chinese coins in any overseas Chinese context. Our research reviews all the evidence relating to the discovery and publicity about the hoard at the time, the people involved, and the subsequent sale and gifting of large portions of it. We conclude that while the coins are genuine Chinese cash, there is little likelihood, partly based on the young age of some of the coins, that they were found in the Palmer Goldfield as alleged. We outline a more likely scenario about how they were acquired along with evidence to support our conclusions. At the time, most people had no reason to think the hoard was not genuine and the story of its discovery and sale were uncritically integrated into local histories and remain so to this day

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