This home was the centre of much Chinese life in Ballarat, but it's under threat of demolition

Built sometime early in the 20^th Century, Victory was the family residence of the Yung Chungs, who were active in the social and political life of Ballarat for decades.

Home of the family matriarch Margaret 'Nana' Chung and her children Charles and Evelyn, the house still stands on a large block, but was originally on enough land to be surrounded by another family home and a vegetable market garden in the middle.

The interior is virtually unchanged from those days: high ceilings, carved fireplaces, a woodstove installed by Charles still working in the kitchen in the rear. Above the front door a transom window proclaims 'Victory' - the name of the racehorse whose winnings allegedly provided the funds for the house. The background colouring, a teal blue, gives an indication it may have been painted by Roy Hammond, whose signwriting business sign still exists on Armstrong Street North and matches the hue of Victory's window almost exactly.

Surrounding the house are thick cypress tree hedges, making entry to it seem like a secret garden. At the same time, just behind the back fence, are the mullock heaps marking Ballarat's history of mining - the Woah Hap Canton mine is nearby. Tall pines grow out of the hard, wasted soil of the heaps, which once were nude of any vegetation and blew chemical-laden dust across Canadian.

Mick Trembath is the great, great grandnephew of Charles Yung Chung and his sister Evelyn. He spent his childhood in the house, and recalls it as a place of Victorian and Edwardian formality even into his childhood in the 1970s.

"Charlie made a promise to his father, saying that he wouldn't get married until he looked after his sister Evelyn," Mick says.

"His bedroom was on one side of the house and Evelyn's was on the other. He never did get married."

Mick stands in the dining room doorway of Victory with Charles Zhang and Brian Foo. The three represent a wealth of combined generational knowledge about the history of Chinese life in Ballarat.

"So for my entire childhood, I never got further than this; I never got past this door,' he says.

"This was the front of the house where you met guests and family. Past here was private. It was only when Charlie died... it was interesting - the whole family just stood here, and most of us said, 'We've never been to this part of the house!'

"This was a very Victorian house. When I grew up here, it was like a piece of Victorian England had been preserved in a little timeframe. And still it hasn't changed; it's exactly the same as it was. He never had a telephone until the 1980s, never had a television. Charles would ride his bike from here at 5am every day, head around the lake and come home, long before doctors suggested it was good for you.

"(This doorway) was to be completely respected. So even my mum had never gone past here. But my grandmother had gone past, perhaps once?"

The house has retained a link to its outdoor washroom, but the woodsheds and other outdoor building have been lost, as have the extensive vegetable gardens.

Charles Zhang says the house is central to the history of the Chinese experience in Ballarat - both good and difficult. So much of the influence of the Chinese in the city is being wiped away quickly through redevelopment, and Ballarat's inherent resistance to acknowledging the presence of the Chinese culturally.

"This house is one of the best-condition examples of a Chinese house," he says.

"I've been to like some of World War One versions of Chinese houses, they stood in Ballarat East, but none of them are as good as this.

Part of Chinese culture, Charles says, is to respect other people. He says if a Chinese person receives respect from another, they will repay it threefold.

"When the Chinese came to a new place, particularly a new country, they learned the local ways very quickly," Charles says.

"Obviously through marriage, they actually mixed the into society. Back then 99 per cent of Chinese in Victoria, in Ballarat, were male. There were very few Chinese females - my research only found four females, all rest of them are male. So what did the men do? They married the Irish girls, or Aboriginal women. The Irish were treated as badly as the Chinese and the Aboriginals. So more than 90 per cent of the intermarriage between Chinese and the non-Chinese was to Irish ladies."

As unionists - Len Chung was president of the textiles union while his brother Charlie was a legendary member of the Railways Union - the activities of Chinese people and their comrades in Ballarat drew the attention of the Victoria Police Forces's Special Branch and ASIO.

Openly supportive and sometimes members of the Communist Party of Australia, they were under surveillance in the 1940s and 50s. ASIO files, obtained and supplied by Ballarat Trades Hall, describe the brothers as 'consistent voters for Communist objects'.

"On many occasions he has been heard to voice his approval of Communism in preference to the British way of life," the police constable writes of Charlie Chung in his extensive report (which also contains many well-known Ballarat names.)

Christine Wicking, 92, was the granddaughter of Margaret Chung. She lived at the Geelong Road property as a child, in a house built from the proceeds of the sale of a pianola her mother owned. Her uncle Charlie Chung described playing on the heaps as a child in the early days of the house's history, in an interview conducted for Ballarat City Council in the 1980s.

"I was born in 1912 and I can remember the mine working out the back. We used to climb up the mullock heaps. They're not like they are now, they were just bare as they came out of the ground. You understand there was no shrubbery, no grass and nothing on them.

"All the whole area around there was just in that state, and we used to climb up there and watch the wheels going up, one turning one way or the other turning the other way. You see as one cage came up the other one would be going down. That was the way they used to do that sort of thing. Some of the cages used to bring up water, they didn't have the sump system they have nowadays."

"We did have a lovely life between the two houses," Christine Wicking told The Courier in an interview last October.

"Nana owned all the land, there was a big garden plot, we had all fresh vegetables on hand all the time. Nana and mum bought a cow, so as children we would have fresh milk. I can honestly say we had friends everywhere."

The City of Ballarat is currently considering the heritage status of Victory.