The Australian four-part series drama New Gold Mountain starring Yoson An to premiere Wednesday 13 October at 9.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
“Let’s reimagine the Chinese voice in our colonial history, one Akubra at a time.”
New Gold Mountain brings to the screen for the first time the story of the Chinese miners who arrived in the Victorian Goldfields in their thousands in the 1850s to try to make their fortune. Using inspired-by-real-life characters and shining a light on forgotten events, this revisionist Western is based in the harsh wild west era of the Australian gold rush and unearths a captivating murder mystery.
The series opens in Ballarat, in 1857, where European, Chinese and Indigenous Australian characters live together in a wild-west frontier town as they seek to strike it rich by finding gold. Tensions between rival camps run high, and Wei Shing, the charismatic leader of the Chinese operation, struggles to remain in control as he secretly amasses his own riches. A further threat to his authority is Cheung Lei, a formidable woman who has arrived with orders from China from her powerful father. When a white woman is found murdered, Shing is fearful the prejudiced Europeans will blame the Chinese. Determined to remain in power and keep his fortune, Shing must find out what really happened. As Shing unravels the mystery, he encounters the recently widowed Belle, who is making her name in town through the local newspaper she has inherited, and Hattie, a young Aboriginal girl trying to get by. (via Mediaweek)
