Cairns & District Chinese Association Inc.
CADCAI is a non-profit voluntary community organisation formed in 1978. It is the lead organisation that supports and promotes Chinese culture and heritage in Far North Queensland. Our principle activities are the preservation of the significant Lit Sung Goong Temple collection, photographs, films and stories from the early days of Cairns Chinatown and district.
CADCAI conducts regular community arts programs centred around the practise and performance of Chinese dancing, ceremonial lion and dragon dancing, percussion skills, calligraphy and language. An established core group of young people perform together regularly at community events in the region. These include, Peace Week, Mareeba Multicultural Festival, Innisfail Kulture Karnivale, Gordonvale Pyramid Race and the Cooktown Discovery Festival.
CADCAI’s primary goal is to establish a Chinese Cultural and Heritage Centre in North Queensland.
CADCAI is registered as a deductible gift recipient (DGR) and fund raising for the proposed permanent and accessible keeping place, the FNQ Chinese Cultural & Heritage Centre, is our primary focus for 2010 & 2011.
Lit Sung Goong Temple Collection - A closed collection of 19th Century Chinese artefacts. Sachs Street, now Grafton Street in Cairns, in the late 19th centuary, was the site of the largest Chinatown in Queensland. It was home to two Chinese temples. Some of the furnishings from one, the Lit Sung Goong, have been preserved to the present day. Research indicates it is, overall, one of the most intact collections of its type in Australasia.
The collection artefacts represent those commonly found within operational temples of the period. Timber friezes, deity statues, paintings, bowls, processional banners, drums, lions, gongs, incense burners, fortune telling blocks and sticks.
The collection offers great research potential in the areas of Chinese history and immigration, art, culture and religious practices.