How Chinese orphan Alloo opened Australia's first restaurant in Ballarat

Born in Guangdong China in 1828, Chin Thum Lok was Alloo's original name. Later, missionaries brought 14-year-old Alloo to Hong Kong and he learnt English in a church school.

Federation University professor John Smyth said Alloo's adventure in Australia started as a 'cook boy' on a pastoral property, where he learnt how to cook for the western palate.

"He was a much more among the 10 or 12 first Chinese to come to this country," he said.

In 1852, Alloo followed the gold miners to the Ballarat goldfields, where he established his first restaurant. The following year he opened a second restaurant called "John Alloo's Chinese restaurant" on Main Road, which was captured in Samuel Thomas Gill's lithograph.

"What he had established here is the first restaurant in the English-speaking world," Mr Smyth said.

"It was [also] the first takeaway restaurant in the world".

In Samuel Thomas Gill's lithograph, there is a line below the name of the restaurant - "soup's always ready".

"Alloo was very smart. He didn't get his hands dirty with digging and dirt. He was following the hungry mouths because he had learned how to cook," Mr Smyth said.

"The only thing you couldn't buy in his restaurant was Chinese food," he said. "He cooked roast and boiled meat, all of the tarts and puddings - to feed the western taste."

Mr Smyth said Alloo also worked as an interpreter for the Chinese Protector of Ballarat, William Henry Foster, but he resigned from the job after not being paid for four months.

"It's a misnamed thing because they weren't protecting anybody apart from themselves. They certainly weren't protecting the Chinese. It was a way of controlling the Chinese, putting them in an area and keeping them confined," he said.

Mr Smyth said Alloo only stayed in Ballarat for three-and-a-half years.

"He was fined for illegally selling alcohol in his restaurant - very heavily, 50 pounds. He was declared insolvent," Mr Smyth said.

After bankruptcy, Alloo moved to Melbourne, becoming a undercover police informer, and he was involved in a murder of a English prostitute near Melbourne Chinatown.

"One of the newspapers sprung his cover and they described him as Johnny Alloo of Ballarat notoriety," Mr Smyth said. "It was about 1857 - the notoriety I think referred to is his illegal alcohol selling."

Chinese Australian Cultural Society vice president Charles Zhang said he had been collecting hidden Chinese-Australian history in Ballarat for 20 years.

Mr Smyth said Mr Zhang came to find out where John Alloo's restaurant was on Main Road, which Mr Smyth had been researching for years.

"[The restaurant] didn't exist after 1856," Mr Smyth said. "It was a restaurant for a very short period."

Mr Smyth said after Alloo left Ballarat, people who took over Alloo's restaurant didn't last very long and turned the place most likely to a general carrier.

"He was famous, except he was invisible," Mr Smyth said.

Besides the special natural of his undercover work and the lack of photographic technology, racism was another reason that there was no certain image of Alloo.

"Chinese were treated like they were cattle - they were not even named," Mr Smyth said. "There was enormous racism and he was buried.

"I'm getting disturbed - because not only Alloo has been obliterated or eliminated from history, the whole of the Chinese history - there was almost no Chinese history left in this town."

"Johnny Alloo ... of Ballarat notoriety", written by John Smyth, will be launched by the Ballarat Historical Society on Wednesday May 22. For book order, contact Xin Jin Shan Chinese Library.