Overview

Opium, Illegal Gambling, and the Secret History of a Historic Quarter Step back in time to explore the dark, hidden stories of Melbourne’s Chinatown from the 1850s to the 1950s - the longest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western world. While Chinatown is celebrated today for its incredible dining, its historic laneways hide a gritty past of high-stakes police raids, illicit opium dens, secret speakeasies, and underground gambling rings. This immersive walking tour cuts through the myths to lay bare the shocking realities of historic blackmail, turf wars, riots, and systemic police corruption that played out behind these intact 19th-century facades. The tour is researched and led by Michael, a private historian and journalist whose extensive work on Melbourne's criminal history has been featured on SBS TV, ABC Radio National, and the Herald Sun. Pulling directly from original source materials and 14 years of dedicated archival research, Michael shares gripping, highly accurate true-crime narratives that bring Chinatown's historic buildings and former inhabitants to life.