Lit Sing Goong Temple Site, Cooktown库克敦列圣宫遗址

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Australia · Queensland · Cooktown · Cooktown's old Chinatown; gateway port of the Palmer River goldfield

First built

c. 1878 · Survived until roughly 1938, when it fell into disrepair and disappeared; it must be noted that the building no longer exists

Overview

Cooktown was the gateway port of the Palmer River goldfield in the nineteenth century; in the 1870s tens of thousands of Chinese miners landed there, and it was for a time the most concentrated center of Chinese population in Queensland. The Lit Sing Goong was built around 1878, originally enshrining nine deities, of which three can be identified today: Guandi, Lü Dongbin and Buk Ti (Beidi, the Northern Emperor); the composition of this pantheon clearly shows that this was a temple of the Daoist system, not merely a generic "Chinese temple." The temple survived until roughly 1938, falling into disrepair and disappearing as the Chinese population sharply declined; it must be made clear that the building no longer exists, and only some of its images and furnishings survive, scattered among museums and private collections. The cluster of Chinese temples along the Cooktown–Palmer River line represents the densest surviving band of religious sites from the history of the Chinese gold rush in North Queensland.

Highlights

• Built around 1878 at the gateway port of the Palmer River goldfield
• Originally enshrined nine deities; three survive today — Guandi, Lü Dongbin and Buk Ti
• The composition of its pantheon clearly belongs to the Daoist system
• The building has disappeared; only some images survive