Tom See Poy

Tom See Poy, also known as Taam Sze-Pui, (circa 185318 April 1926) was a Chinese Australian storekeeper in Innisfail, Queensland, Australia. At its peak, his department store See Poy & Sons was one of the foremost department stores in north Queensland.

With the discovery of gold on the Palmer River in 1872, many Chinese men, including Taam Sze Pui (Tom See Poy, an anglicisation of his name that he came to adopt), migrated to work on the Palmer goldfields. Tom See Poy spent five years unsuccessfully searching for gold.

In 1880, the Johnstone River district was identified as suitable for agriculture and opened up for settlement and sugar production. Workers came from around the north, including Tom See Poy and other Chinese men. By 1886, the Chinese community at Geraldton (later Innisfail) had grown rapidly, almost matching the Chinese population at Cairns (the largest outside Brisbane). They worked in the sugar and banana industry, the latter rivalling sugar as the region's primary economic activity. Many Chinese men were involved in the banana industry, including Tom See Poy and Tam Sie whose early success with bananas saw them become leading businessmen investing in property and farming. The following year the firm embarked upon a significant upgrade of its existing timber store and built Innisfail's biggest department store. The new two storey building was constructed of reinforced concrete - a popular modern material being increasingly used at the time because of its ability to withstand cyclones and floods. The new store was the equal of similar establishments in other parts of Queensland, and also of the Chinese Australian owned and operated emporia that dominated the skylines of Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shanghai between 1907 and 1931. (The emporia owned by the Chinese Australian Guo and Ma families are two examples of those operating in Hong Kong and China. ) At its peak See Poy & Sons was one of the foremost department stores in north Queensland.

Later life Tom See Poy retired from an active role in the family business in 1925. He published an autobiography My Life and Work that same year, authored under his Chinese name Tam Sze-Pui and written in both Chinese and English. He was honoured by the townspeople of Innisfail with a very long funeral procession to the Innisfail Cemetery, where he was buried according to the rites of the Church of England.

Legacy Tom See Poy's department store continued to operate until the early 1980s. In 1981, the whole See Poy family was honoured by the Queensland Government with a commemorative plaque for their contribution to retailing.

Tom See Poy's memoir My Life and Work, first published in 1925 as a private edition, was reviewed in academic journal The Australian Quarterly in 1931, and is now recognised as a historically significant work as the only published memoir of a 19th-century Chinese-Australian gold miner. An extract of My Life and Work was included in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature published in 2010.