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C1887
John Alloo’s Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853.
Artist:
Famous colonial lithograph by Samuel Thomas Gill of Alloo’s Chinese restaurant, Ballarat. The sign states “Soups Always Ready“. Alloo’s was Australia’s first recorded Chinese restaurant. It was opened by John Alloo at Bakery Hill on Ballarat’s goldfields in 1854. The … Read Full Description
$A 245
S/N: HOBA-AA-056–193070
(B010)
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Details
Full Title:
John Alloo’s Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853.
Date:
C1887
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured lithograph.
Image Size:
190mm
x 110mm
Paper Size:
213mm
x 135mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1887
Description:
Famous colonial lithograph by Samuel Thomas Gill of Alloo’s Chinese restaurant, Ballarat. The sign states “Soups Always Ready“. Alloo’s was Australia’s first recorded Chinese restaurant. It was opened by John Alloo at Bakery Hill on Ballarat’s goldfields in 1854. The restaurant served European and Chinese food. It was later moved to Main Road, Ballarat.
John Alloo (originally Chin Thum Lok) was born in Guandong (Canton). He arrived in Australia in the 1840s, prior to the gold rush. It’s possible that he was an indentured labourer; from the 1830s onward Chinese labourers arrived to work on rural properties where many became cooks. His restaurant, on the Eureka Lead, Ballarat’s main gold seam, catered to the local miners. With the slogan “Soups always ready”, the menu also included plum puddings, jam tarts, roasted and boiled joints and all kinds of vegetables. John Alloo became a leading figure in the local community and was appointed as the interpreter for the first Chinese Protector, William Henry Foster. He married a Scottish woman named Margaret Peacock. In the 1860s Alloo moved to Otago in New Zealand, where gold had also been discovered. There he became an interpretor for the police force and was the first ethnic Chinese to be sworn in as a police constable. He died in 1889.
Collections:
State Library Victoria: Accession no: H8742
National Library Australia: Bib ID 1275037
State Library Victoria: Accession no: H8742
National Library Australia: Bib ID 1275037
Samuel Thomas Gill (1818 - 1880)
Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-1880) S.T. Gill as he is often now known, was born at Somerset, England, the son of Rev. Samuel Gill, Baptist minister, and educated at Plymouth in a school kept by his parents, and later at Dr Seabrook's academy. His father taught him drawing and he was later employed in London as 'Draftsman and Water Colour Painter' by the Hubard Profile Gallery, an establishment which produced silhouettes. He arrived in South Australia in 1839 and by March 1840 had established a studio in Gawler Place, Adelaide, which was open from 'eleven till dusk'; he offered to produce portraits of human beings, horses and dogs, and to sketch houses and transfer the sketches 'to paper suited for home conveyance'. In 1846 he accompanied the Horrock's expedition which reached the head of Spencer Gulf. In 1852 Gill travelled to the Victoria and in the next twenty years produced drawings, watercolours and lithographs of scenes of the Victorian and New South Wales gold fields. After 1870 Gill fell into obscurity and on 27 October 1880 he collapsed in Post Office Place, Melbourne, and was found to be dead when taken to hospital. Gill's legacy is a large body of work which portrayed life during the greatest gold boom the world had ever seen.
