(A-Z) Lennox, David (1788 - 1873)
LEON (LEE ON), ANDREW (1840?-1920), businessman, was born probably in China or in Hong Kong after the British annexation of 1841. After some experience of tropical agriculture in the West Indies, including two years in Cuba, he migrated in 1875 to Queensland where the Palmer gold rush was attracting many Chinese. Closely aligned with business interests established by several Hong Kong firms in Cooktown and Cairns, he managed the large store of On Lee in Cairns and then was a partner in the trading firm Sum Tung Lee in Cooktown and Sum Chung Lee in Cairns.
In 1881 through his contacts Leon was able to form a syndicate of a hundred Chinese in Cooktown and Hong Kong to take up land near Cairns for tropical agriculture. By 1885 they owned 2528 acres (1023 ha) on which they had invested over £58,500 in improvements. After an unsuccessful attempt at cotton-growing the syndicate, somewhat ironically named the Hop Wah or 'Good Luck' Company, turned to sugar and in 1882 crushed the first cane processed in the Cairns district. The Hop Wah was run entirely as a Chinese co-operative, the only European being their engineer. With improved machinery, increasing skill and 500 acres (202 ha) under cane the Hop Wah's pioneer efforts won wide respect in North Queensland, but falling sugar prices and the lack of capital hit them and the rest of the industry in the mid-1880s. In 1886 the syndicate was forced to sell almost half of its land for £515,000 to the Charters Towers mining magnate, Thomas Mills, and its cane and machinery to a group of Cairns merchants who lost heavily in the speculation. The rest of the Hop Wah's land was used for fruit-growing until it too was mortgaged in 1894. In 1888 Leon bought a selection in the Barron Valley for fruit-growing where most of his energies were then directed, and he appeared to take only a cursory interest in the remaining Hop Wah land. Most of the Chinese employed with the Hop Wah went into rice-growing, using their remaining capital to back the construction of a rice-mill by an Irish investor, Thomas Behan.
A convinced believer in tropical agriculture by small farmers, Leon had nearly succeeded in a venture which would have had implications for the future of the sugar industry and the concept of White Australia. His failure can be attributed to such incontestable forces as governmental inefficiency and natural calamities, but cognizance must also be taken of the defects in his planning. Like most of the early agriculturists in North Queensland, he overreached himself by investing in land of which only a small portion was suitable for cultivation. Even at the peak of the Hop Wah development, the returns barely covered the investments made. He later went to Hughenden where he was living in 1905, but was residing at Cairns when he died aged 80 of cancer on 27 June 1920.
As leader of a large group of Chinese in North Queensland and one of the five most prominent members of the whole Cairns community, Leon was able to combine the best of both cultures. A naturalized citizen he married a European woman and was immersed in the social and business life of the European community in Cairns. He also represented the Chinese community on municipal councils, acted as their legal interpreter and organized much of their business. His achievements and his social status posed great problems for anti-Chinese enthusiasts of the day.
Select Bibliography
Royal Commission into the General Conditions of the Sugar Industry, Votes and Proceedings (Legislative Assembly, Queensland), 1889, 4, 37; Queenslander, 2 May 1877; Cairns Post, 1884, Apr 1887; K. Cronin, The Chinese Question in Queensland: A Study of Racial Interaction (B.A. Hons thesis, University of Queensland, 1970); mortgage no 218, Hop Wah Plantation mortgage book 17 (Queensland State Archives); CRS/158 and LAN/AG 201, 212 (Queensland State Archives).
Author: Kathryn Cronin, G. C. Bolton
Print Publication Details: Kathryn Cronin, G. C. Bolton, 'Leon, Andrew (1841? - 1920)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, p. 80.
