With a flourish, dancing lions and the sounds of an ancient culture mark the launch of a new exhibition "From Robe to Chinese Fortunes".
It showcases the migrant experience of Chinese in Australia between 1850 and the turn of the century.
The exhibition was opened by the head of the Chinese Community Council, June Anderson.
"Chinese immigrants indeed have played an important role in this history, in this country. We take pride to celebrate our heritage and to share their stories with you."
The stories told at Melbourne's Immigration Museum are rich with colour and sound.
Items on display include ornate cutlery used by early Chinese migrants and, as curator Cash Brown explains, elaborate garments handwoven for special occasions.
"They would mix and match them. So there's no specific way of actually wearing them and often women would be wearing men's garments and the men would certainly be wearing women's garments. But the beautiful thing about these (garments) is the incredible kind of stitching and couching that's on them. There's nothing like this anywhere else in the world. So these were made very specifically, for this specific purpose and that's one of the wonderful things that makes this collection so significant."
But behind the vibrant contribution they were making to Australian society was the shadow of racism.
And it's a particularly timely exhibition coming soon after the Victorian Government issued a historic formal apology for the overt discrimination experienced by Chinese migrants on the goldfields.
Thousands were forced to land in South Australia and walk from Robe in the state's south-east to the goldfields to avoid a prohibitive ten-pound poll tax imposed on fortune seekers arriving in Victoria.
Victorian Multicultural Affairs Minister, Robin Scott, says there was an unfounded fear of Chinese migrants at the time.
"This is a very important exhibition because it shows part of Australia's story -- part of the story where we were once a community that discriminated against others overtly through state policy, to now where we are a proud multicultural state here in Victoria where discrimination is anathema to the vast majority of our community."
Anita Jack is a descendant of Chinese migrants from that time.
She says racism didn't end there.
"Even in my own father's time, it was during the White Australia policy and when he married my mother -- and my mother and father were the first generation of mixed marriages -- my mother had aunties and that who wouldn't attend the marriage."
She's keen for the next generation to learn the history of the struggle to have the strains of harmony heard above the din of discrimination.
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