Volunteers in the western Victorian town of Ararat are hopeful that visitors, including Chinese tourists, will return now that one of the town's most unique attractions has reopened. 

Due to COVID, The Gum San Chinese Heritage Centre has been shut for the past two years.

In that time, it has had a makeover, and the local council has reached a new memorandum of understanding that will mean the centre is run by volunteers rather than paid council workers.

The museum recognises the group of Chinese prospectors who, while on their way to Victoria's goldfields from Robe, South Australia, happened upon gold in a creek bed where modern Ararat now stands.

Friends of Gum San president Henry Gunstone said they virtually revamped the whole place.

"We've got new signs, new computers, and fixed the gold tank that was leaking," Mr Gunstone said.

"We have to try and attract a portion of those to come here."

The centre received about 3,000 tourists a year before the pandemic, among them school groups from mainland China coming to learn about the only town in Australia founded by Chinese settlers.

"I met with [the See Yup Society in Melbourne] last week, and they are going to support us wholeheartedly," Mr Gunstone said.

He said schools, including those in Ararat, visited just once, so the Friends of Gum San needed to meet the school principals and get them to visit.

Mr Gunstone said it would be a challenge to get Chinese tourists back to Ararat.

"Whether that will change under the new Prime Minister … it's been tit for tat right through, so it's going to be a difficult period for us."

The value of education

Gum San's reopening comes following weeks of geopolitical jostling by the Chinese and Australian governments for influence in the South Pacific and years of generally deteriorating relations between the two nations.

But Pichamon Yeophantong, senior lecturer in international relations at UNSW Canberra, said lockdowns in China were a more significant obstacle to tourism returning than global politics.

"It's highly unlikely China's borders are going to be open any time soon," Dr Yeophantong said.

"We might expect reopening in 2023, as the COVID situation in major cities like Shanghai is still very much ongoing.

Dr Yeophantong said beyond the tourism value to their communities, cultural tourism sites like Gum San could play a part in maintaining relations between China and Australia.

"The appeal of such sites should not just be about Chinese tourists," she said.

"It should also have appeal for people of other ethnicities and Australians more generally. The [Chinese] community that continues to exist there is part of the fabric of Australian multiculturalism.

"What we need more, not just in Australian-Chinese relations but in Australian foreign policy, is an appreciation of that multiculturalism and a real focus on enhancing inclusion."

Mr Gunstone said outside of Ararat itself, not many people knew about the story of how the town was founded, and how that story was inexorably linked with the victimisation of Chinese arrivals to Australia in the 1850s.

"Just two or three years ago, the Premier apologised to the Chinese people for the way they were treated back then.

"When you read the acts they passed, it's madness."