We are pleased to announce the launch of the digitized version of Arthur B.W. Yong's book, "Chinese Settlement in Whittlesea: Our Chinese Community, Our Stories" It is offered free to download exclusively on this website. All you need to do is to extract files from WinZip and Adobe Acrobat Reader to read it.
We are sorry for all the people, who missed out getting a copy of the actual book on Saturday 9 February 2008. Due to budget constraint, we only have limited numbers to hand out. The book is not for sale. Hope this will be a suitable substitute for everyone and hope you all enjoy the book as much as it was a pleasure for Arthur to write it.
Thank you all who have attended the Book Launch. WCA appreciated the strong support and generous assistance it received. We understood majority of people enjoyed themselves very much and commented it was a fantastic and successful event.
May the people who had attended the Book Launch last Saturday at Mill Park Library, please fill out these simple Evaluation Questionnaires:
The following members were elected for their positions of WCA Committee of Management 2007 -2009 with the assistance of Mr Frank Merlino
President: Mr Arthur B.W. Yong JP
Vice President: Ms Jessie Chan & Ms Jane Wong Treasurer: Ms Ang Bee Yew Assistant Treasurer: Ms Janice Khoo Secretary/ Public Officer: Ms Judy Soon Assistant Secretary: Ms Yvonne Ho & Mr Ward Set Committee Members: Ms Betty Law, Ms Sok Fen Cheng, Ms Shu Qun Zhu, Ms Yumiko Lee & Mr Albert Yew Honorary Advisers: Mr Ji Hua Wu, Mr Qi Zhi Zhou, Mr Patrick Chow, Mr Thomas Ling, Mr Paul Sun, Mr Wei Chen, Mr Kee Guan Saw, Mr Allen Lam
Many local Chinese residents living and working in the City of Whittlesea migrated from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland China, Macau, East Timor, Vietnam, Taiwan and Cambodia. Hence a local Chinese association was proposed in 2006 to meet the social, cultural, educational, recreational and other needs of the Chinese community within the municipality. It was agreed that the main venue for the association activities would need to be acessible to local elderly Chinese residents and that the association would aspire to promote better community relations and an understanding of Chinese history, art and culture amongst the residents of the City of Whittlesea. The establishment of the Whittlesea Chinese Association (WCA) occurred on 3 June 2006 to cater for those needs.
The Association members speak a variety of languages and dialects, including English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, Malay, Vietnamese and Timorese.
The latest Census of 2006 shows there were 3,369 people within the municipality who identified their ancestry as Chinese, an increase of 16% since the 2001 Census. Of these groups of Chinese ancestry residents, 3,107 have both parents were born overseas, while 89 stated that only one of their parents was born overseas and 78 have both parents born in Australia; and 95 people normally speaking a Chinese language at home had also risen significantly, to 2,611 at the 2006 Census. The main Chinese languages remained Cantonese (1,156) and Mandarin (925), both of which showed a significant increase in number, while the number of people speaking Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien, or other Chinese dialects remained about the same.
It is offered free to download exclusively on this website.
