Temple of the Holy Triad (Sarm Sung Goon), Albion布里斯班三圣宫（早餐溪庙）
- Type
- Overseas Daoist Temples
- Location
- Australia · Queensland · Albion, Brisbane · 32 Higgs Street, Albion; formerly known as the Breakfast Creek Joss House
- Coordinates
- -27.4392, 153.0453 Map ↗
- First built
- 1885–1886 · Listed on the Queensland Heritage Register (No. 600056) on 21 October 1992
- Heritage status
- Queensland Heritage Register #600056(1992)Brisbane City Heritage Register
Overview
The Holy Triad Temple (known to the Chinese as Sarm Sung Goon, and to Westerners as the Breakfast Creek Joss House) was built jointly in 1885–1886 by five major Cantonese clans of Brisbane; the site was chosen at Breakfast Creek because many local Chinese ran market gardens there. The temple enshrines the God of Wealth, the King of Medicine and Wenchang, hence the name "Holy Triad." The building is a rectangular rendered-brick structure with a triple Chinese ceramic-tiled roof, its ridges and gable ends adorned with glazed ceramic sculpture; the triple roof was ordered from China and shipped over by Quong Nam Tai & Co., and assembled on site by Cantonese craftsmen. The interior has three bays, with gilded carved beams and pillars, and displays of silk, embroidered hangings and palace lanterns. The first head trustee, Sum Chick Tong, was a merchant who was ruined in the anti-Chinese riots of 1888 and died in 1902; his daughter-in-law, an Englishwoman named Dorothy Chick Tong, kept the temple for more than twenty years from 1968 to 1988. It was restored and reopened in June 1966, and is the oldest of the only three surviving nineteenth-century Chinese temples in Queensland, still opened today on deities' feast days.
Highlights
- The oldest surviving Chinese temple in Queensland (1885–1886)
- Built jointly by five major Cantonese clans
- Triple roof ordered from and shipped over from China
- Enshrines the God of Wealth, the King of Medicine and Wenchang
- Queensland Heritage Register No. 600056