[1][2] Hang Gong was born in London to Thomas and Sarah Bowman and, as a family and with at least one sister (Elizabeth), they immigrated to Australia in around 1861.
More children followed with Jane Elizabeth in July 1869, Selina (Cissy/Cissie) a few years later, Herbert Doral in 1876 and Ernest Howard Lee in 1878 (who was born while they were travelling to Hong Kong).
[3] It is unclear whether the pair ever married legally but they lived together from at least 1867 and Hang Gong practised as a nurse and midwife during this time.
Hang Gong immediately begun practicing as a midwife here and, in February 1881, registered the birth of her first assisted delivery there to stonemason Alfred Spurgin and his wife Emma [1] Also in 1881 Hang Gong petitioned Edward William Price, the then Government Resident, for two of her sons (who were then 15 and 18) to be given work as court interpreters.
[4][5][6] In 1904 Alex Dowker, who had recently visited the Northern Territory, published articles in the North Queensland Register regarding the Hang Gong families fortunes, and their success in tin mining.