The battle to save an important piece of Ballarat's built heritage, the former Chung home in Geelong Road, has been won with the house being purchased for preservation and restoration by local investors.
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The house, known as Victory, was built by the Chungs at the turn of last century. With some alterations made in the 1920s, it remains an important marker of the rising success of the Chinese community in Ballarat, and was home to generations of the Chung family, who made their mark in the cultural and working life of a city which resisted acknowledging the existence of Oriental influence, and demolished Chinese heritage.
An application for demolition of Victory, which had not been identified in the City of Ballarat's Heritage Gap Review, was made to the council early in 2022. A community campaign to save the house, highlighted in The Courier, eventually saw the City of Ballarat commission a heritage report which recommended an interim preservation order apply to the building.
That preservation order was rejected by a four out of seven attending councillors at a planning meeting, leading to an outcry in the community and a reinvigorated campaign to educate the city's representatives about the role the Chinese played in the railways, textiles and union life in Ballarat.
Saving this house was one of the best examples of the community working together
- Charles Zhang
Subsequently an identical motion was reintroduced at a full council meeting, and the motion to protect Victory was supported overwhelmingly, with councillors recanting their previous opposition to heritage values.
Charles Zhang, who helped organise the campaign to save Victory alongside other Chinese-Australian descendants in Ballarat, says he and another investor who has requested anonymity at present put up the funds to purchase the property, and will now establish a company to begin Victory's transformation into a museum celebrating the Chinese contribution to Ballarat.
He says there will be two components to the museum, which will focus on a local history of the Chinese in Ballarat, as well as a broader consideration of the Chinese in Australia. He says he's been doing preliminary work with the Trembath family, who are one of the lineages of the Chungs, seeking photographic and historical material to begin the transformation of the existing house back into something which represents the cultural milieu which existed there from the 1900s to the 1960s.
Planning will get underway later for other building to increase the capability of the museum, creating a place where, Mr Zhang says, local schools can visit and get a real appreciation of the full contribution the Chinese made to Ballarat.
"Saving this house was one of the best examples of the community working together, Mr Zhang says.
"Members of the heritage working group, descendants, union members, members of the public, heritage specialists, the newspaper - every single person pulling together. Just three months ago, who would have thought we could get council to change their mind? It's incredible."
