Lit Sung Goong (Innisfail Temple), Innisfail因尼斯费尔列圣宫

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Australia · Queensland · Innisfail · Innisfail, North Queensland; now known as the Innisfail Temple, formerly the Joss House

First built

Rebuilt in the 1940s · The earlier temple was destroyed by a cyclone in 1918; the nineteenth-century original images and furnishings were retained when it was rebuilt

Overview

The Innisfail Lit Sung Goong ("Lit Sung" meaning "the assembled gods") stands in the sugar-cane and banana district of North Queensland; around 1883 more than half the population of the area around Cairns, Port Douglas, Innisfail and Atherton was Chinese, most from the Sze Yup and Hakka regions, engaged in farming, logging and mining. The old temple was destroyed by a cyclone in 1918; the building standing today was rebuilt in the 1940s, and at the time of rebuilding the images, altar tables, incense burners and plaques of the nineteenth-century original temple were all moved into it, so that although the building is new, its furnishings are old. Besides the assembled deities, the temple also enshrines Hau Wong (Hou Wang), making it, together with the Hou Wang Temple in Atherton, one of the rare nodes in the distribution of the Hau Wong cult in North Queensland. This temple is one of only three surviving early Chinese temples in Queensland, and is still maintained and kept open by the local Chinese community today, serving as a place of folk worship for a community of Chinese agricultural immigrants.

Highlights

• One of only three surviving early Chinese temples in Queensland
• The old temple was destroyed by a cyclone in 1918 and rebuilt in the 1940s
• Retains the images and furnishings of the nineteenth-century original temple
• Also enshrines Hau Wong, echoing the Hou Wang Temple in Atherton