Vale Wellington Lee

September 17, 1925 – December 25, 2022

By Nicholas Reece

It is often forgotten that in Melbourne’s earliest days there was a large and thriving Asian community.

The census of 1861 revealed the Chinese population accounted for almost 10 per cent of the new colony of Victoria, while Little Bourke Street in Melbourne was a bustling centre for Asian cultural and business activity.

More than 160 years later the Chinese community once again represents about 10 per cent of Victoria’s population, and Little Bourke Street is as busy as ever as the oldest continuous Chinatown in the western world.

But, of course, the similarity in population share and continuity of Chinatown belies the tumultuous history of Chinese Australians – the initial wave of immigration was quickly rebuffed by decades of segregation, persecution and the White Australia Policy, which drove the Asian community into decline.

Straddling this turbulent period stands the Lee family and its most accomplished family member Wellington Lee, a decorated war veteran, pharmacist, small business owner and deputy lord mayor of Melbourne.

Lee’s family arrived from China in the 1850s, and they joined tens of thousands of others chasing their fortune on Victoria’s goldfields.

Unlike so many others, the Lee family was still in Australia four generations later. By then the family was living in Darwin, where Wellington was born in 1925.

Lee grew up in the Northern Territory, which had a significant Asian population at the time. The family would later move to Queensland, where Lee would complete his schooling. Later again, he would move to Melbourne and complete a degree in pharmacy at the Victorian Pharmacy College in Parkville.

During the Second World War, Lee was a pilot in the RAAF and remained on the Active Reserve of Officers for many years.

Lee was proud of the fact that he was a Returned Serviceman. He would march in the Anzac Day parade, and in his later years he still participated in a wheelchair or special vehicle.

Lee also became a prominent figure in veterans affairs as a member of the RSL and served on the state executive of the Victorian RSL, occasionally bumping heads with president Bruce Ruxton and his anti-Asian rhetoric.

But it was as a City of Melbourne councillor and as deputy lord mayor that Wellington Lee would rise to public prominence. He was a resident and small business owner in the CBD, running a pharmacy on the corner of Russell and Little Bourke streets, where the 7-Eleven convenience store is now located, and he served as a local justice of the peace.

He was also an early convert to CBD living, having resided at the top end of Bourke Street for many years.

From here Lee was able to use his great strength — his ability to get along with people. Wellington Lee was a character. He was a big personality. He was both a gentleman and a larrikin. And he made it his business to get to know everyone in the CBD community.

When Lee was first elected to council in 1977 he was one of the first Australians of Asian heritage to be elected to public office. This was more than a decade ahead of an Asian Australian being elected to a state or federal parliament.

He would go on to be one of the longest-serving councillors in Melbourne, having served five terms spanning the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, including a term as deputy lord mayor alongside lord mayor Peter Costigan.

Lee did not run for council as an endorsed candidate for any of the major political parties or as a representative of the powerful Civic Group that once dominated City of Melbourne politics.

His electoral success lay in him being a champion of shopkeepers and the small but growing number of residents in the city. He also skilfully navigated the many groups that represented the city’s growing Chinese community.

Lee was able to connect with individuals at any level. He was on the ground, he was on the street, he was at every event big and small, he was the quintessential local representative who knew his parish well.

During his years on council, Lee would spend his week between his Russell Street pharmacy and Town Hall on Swanston Street. The five-minute walk would regularly take 30-plus minutes because Lee would stop and chat with so many people. Staff at the City of Melbourne came to know his patterns well and so his calendar would be surreptitiously adjusted to factor in his delayed travel time.

The period from the late 1970s to the 1990s was an extremely exciting time to serve on council in the city of Melbourne. The area was being transformed as many of the old factories and warehouses in Southbank, West Melbourne, North Melbourne, Docklands and elsewhere were closing.

This provided opportunities for the city to formulate a masterplan for new suburbs and build major new civic infrastructure, including parks, community centres, sports centres and libraries.

Major changes were also made to building and planning codes to allow and encourage residential dwellings into the central city. This included the transformation of the CBD as a place for people to live and the establishment of Southbank and Docklands as mixed-use suburbs.

The 1980s also brought the rejuvenation of Little Bourke Street and the Chinatown precinct, with significant investment in new infrastructure to celebrate its cultural heritage. This coincided perfectly with a new wave of Asian immigration to Melbourne.

Lee made three unsuccessful attempts at election to federal parliament. He stood for the ALP in Kooyong in 1974, and the Unity Party (Anti-Pauline Hanson Party) in 1998 and 2001.

Lee was never successful in being elected Lord Mayor despite serving as a councillor in the era of the revolving mayor elected annually by councillors. The explanation lies in the fact that he was not part of any of the major groups of councillors at Town Hall. He was his own man and very independent-minded.

The scale of Lee’s contribution to community life over the decades is demonstrated by the exhausting length and breadth of the many roles he held.

He was president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Victoria, the Australian Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Chinese Associations, as well as chair of Overseas Students’ Trust and Emergency Fund.

He served on the state executive of the Victorian RSL and the Victorian Regional Council Air Training Corps, and also served on the State Library Foundation, the Adult Parole Board and the Honorary Magistrates Bench. Lee was a district governor of Lions International, a Red Cross Appeals organiser, a member of the Victorian Health Services Review Committee, Chair of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria and the Landcare Foundation of Victoria.

Lee is survived by his first wife Irene, his daughters Geraldine and Larene, his son Grant and nine grandchildren.

The story of the Lee family and of Wellington Lee is a distinctively Australian one. As a fourth-generation Australian of Asian descent, he was as Australian as you get. But it also meant he was uniquely placed to serve as a community leader and public representative when Australia was at the crossroads to becoming a modern multicultural society.

He faced up to racism at many stages of his life, but in keeping with the era he never let it define him.

Wellington Lee was a local legend, a champion for a multitude of good causes and a trailblazer on so many levels.

Nicholas Reece is the Deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne

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