General News
20 February, 2026
Spiritual home
CONSTRUCTION has started on the long-awaited Cairns Chinese Culture and Heritage Centre, which will house what is recognised as the most complete collection of imperial Chinese temple fittings in Australia, if not the world.
When opened next year, the $4 million centre – including a café – will become a tourist attraction, just across the road from the city’s Chinese Friendship Gardens.
The sod was turned on the site in Greenslopes St on Tuesday morning with the Queensland LNP Government meeting an election commitment, providing $2.7 million towards the cost with the balance covered by the Cairns and District Chinese Association.
As well as housing the Cairns Lit Sung Goong Temple artefacts collection, it will also be a venue for education, research, performing arts and community events. The collection includes deities, an altar, incense burners, wall hangings and steel banners.
It is expected the building will be handed over at the end of the year and the fit-out of the museum will start for the opening in the Chinese New Year in 2027.
Multiculturalism Minister Fiona Simpson said it was “an exciting day, incredible to think, after more than 40 years with the Chinese and District Community Association (CADCAI), working hard, fundraising, but most importantly, protecting precious artefacts from the very early Chinese community here in the district”.
She said it was a celebration of the important Chinese heritage of the region.
“It is not only a celebration of the very rich Chinese heritage, where about a third of the Cairns community were Chinese back in the late 1800s and they had a significant presence, and today we see not only that presence and the artifacts coming to a place that will keep them safe, it’s a gathering place where people of all cultures can gather, appreciate this rich heritage, but also use these facilities for other purposes as well that strengthen our local community,” she said.
Chinese association president Nathan Lee Long said it was “a very auspicious day, being the first day of lunar new year, the year of the red horse, where we officially turn the sod for the Cairns Chinese Culture and Heritage Centre”.
“The value and the benefits that this project will bring to Cairns and the Far North, is not only socially, but economically,” he said.
“The Cairns Chinese Culture and Heritage Centre will, not only be the foundation for Chinese culture in Cairns through Chinese dance, language and food, but also be the foundation and the gateway to Chinese heritage in Cairns, Far North Queensland and Cape York, where the unique story of Chinese culture and heritage in Cairns will be told, but then it will be the place where people can come and learn about the many stories of the Chinese heritage in Cairns and the Far North.”
Mr Lee Long said as well as fundraising, the association sold land which was earmarked for the centre not far from the new location.
He also paid tribute to the late Mary Low, a CADCAI luminary who died last year.
She was the driving force behind the centre, the storage and protection of the artefacts and the revitalisation of Chinese New Year festivities.
Mr Lee Long said three significant trees (two figs and a melaleuca) on the site, between NorthSite and the Eisteddfod hall, had been saved while two had to go to make way for the new centre.
Architect Roger Mainwood of TPG Architects said his firm had been working on the project for 10 years and finally had found “the right-sized project with the right-sized budget”.
“That’s actually 150 years since the building, the temple that was constructed in the city, began in February 1876 in Grafton Street, the temple from which the artefacts that are really incredibly precious,” he said.
“In fact, they are definitely the only artefacts from the temple, Chinese temple from that period in Australia. And they may, in fact, be the only artefacts that have survived today.
“So, they’re significant in the world sense as well. Because unfortunately, through the loss of the temples around the world, the same stories in Cairns, the artefacts were lost.
“But here, the five families, I believe, took the artefacts and have looked after them for the last 60 years, and here we are ready to start this construction.
The main contractor is MyBuild Group.
