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plaintiff ask for the three pounds ten shillings. Defendant replied 'I
will pay you next week. I The witness was cross-examined by
defendant, but did not shake his testimony. By the Bench: I was
down the cellar often. The defendant talk lot about fan tan. That
only an excuse. By defendant: I saw you 1st May down cellar. You
were not drunk. You were sober as a judge. Lee Chew, sworn, said
"I am cook at Mr. Kelly's. That night, May 1st, they ask me go down
garden. I get drunk and play fan tan altogether. I loose all my
money. He say you want some more. Next morning he came up and
say you owe me three pounds ten shillings. I did not play any more.
I came home about two o'clock. I stop all the night down there from
seven o'clock. I took down seven or eight pound. I loose all.
Verdict for full amount. Three pounds ten shillings and costs of
court.(Sturt Recorder, 24 May 1895:2)
Mr. Kelly was in all probability Robert Kelly, then licensee of the Albert
Hotel at Milparinka, and Tom Gox was, of course, "Cocky the Chinaman".
The next mention of the Chinese gardens was contained in a Sturt
Recorder editorial deploring the state of the water supply at Milparinka.
The settlement which might, and would be with a proper water
supply, an oasis in the desert, is still a barren waste. There are no
cottage gardens to educate and purify the minds of the young and
act as a solace to the old. The vegetable and fruit supply, which
might be so abundant, is in the hands of a few Chinese, who charge
1/- for a small bunch of vegetables, and from 9d to 1/6 per pound
for grapes, and in like proportion for melons and tomatoes and such
like when they are to be had. (Sturt Recorder, 8 March 1896:2)
Two months later it was reported that '...we are at the mercy of a onehorse
Chinaman's Garden for a meagre supply of a few miserable
vegetables and at famine prices too.... (Sturt Recorder, 29 May 1896:2)
Given the lengthy gaps in the chronology which has been established, it is
not appropriate to assume that prostitutes were normally present at the
Chinese gardens or 'camp' at Milparinka. However, on the basis of the
description of 'Chinese Camps' elsewhere, discussed at paragraph 3.1.4,
and the following item from the Sturt Recorder, this may well have been
the case.
'Milparinka Police Court before John Ducat, PM
Tuesday July 13, 1897.
Samuel Thomas was charged with maliciously InJunng property
belonging to George Ling, to whit six panes of glass and a kerosene
lamp to the value of £2/4/6.