WING HING LONG MUSEUM

Wing Hing Long was established in the late nineteenth century as one of a number of stores servicing the tin mining communities of the Tingha district. Tin was first found in the area in the early 1870s. The discovery created a boom in productivity and population which peaked in the late nineteenth century and which declined as the tin was mined out.

Here was a typical general store in rural New South Wales where you could buy anything and everything. It was a busy place and, at this time, the building with its new timber walls and iron gabled roof demonstrated that the town itself had moved from the slab walls and bark rooves of a temporary mining community to more permanent structures. This was a store with a sound business and good prospects for the future.

In 1918, Jack Joe Lowe became the owner of the store.' Born in China in 1882, he had landed at Cooktown around 1900, and spent time in Sydney and Gunnedah before arriving, with his wife and eldest son, in Tingha in about 1915. J.J. Lowe was the fifth Chinese owner the property. The first was Ah Lin, identified as a storekeeper from Inverell. He purchased the land from George Fearby in 1881. Subsequent Chinese owners were Jock Sing of Glen Innes (1883-1887); Ah Bow, a miner from Tingha (1887-1899); and Charles Hing, a storekeeper from Tingha (1899-1918). It is unclear which of these early owners built the store, but building materials and styles suggest that it was constructed some time during the 1880s.

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