Wong Ah Gye and Harriet Asquith were married at 50 Wellington Street Richmond (Harriet's home) on the 6th of May, 1869. Their marriage is recorded in the County of Bourke records as being performed by Mr. Mortimer, the Registrar of Marriages. Wong Ah Gye's occupation is listed as 'storekeeper' and Harriet's as 'needlewoman'. No records exist that might explain how they met - perhaps Harriet's work brought her into contact with the merchant, Ah Gye. However, recent research suggests that marriage between Chinese men and women of European extraction was not as uncommon as one might suspect. (See Bagnall & Loh, in particular).

That is not to say that interracial marriages were either commonplace or wholly accepted in late 19th century colonial Australia. As Kate Bagnall has argued,

"On a general level, the Chinese were fundamentally opposed to outmarriage and desired wherever possible to return to China to marry a Chinese woman if they were unable to find a Chinese girl to marry overseas. Outmarriage was used, however, as a strategy in ensuring progeny and the continuation of the family line when an immediate return to China may not have been possible or where business or other interests meant that longer residence overseas was considered necessary." (Bagnall, 2000, p.5)

Opposition to interracial marriages from the white community was uneven. But it would be fair to argue, as Bagnall does, that

"the overwhelming reaction to Chinese-European sexual relationships and marriages throughout the last part of the century was opposition, and those couples who chose to be in such relationships must have known in a very real sense that they were 'transgressing' in the eyes of their white neighbours." (Bagnall, 2000, p.7)

Part of the reason for this opposition lay in the fear of the creation of a 'piebald race' which stemmed in turn from a belief that the results of racial mixing and creation of 'half-castes' was detrimental to all. (Bagnall, 2002, p.1)

Bagnall notes that,

"Until recently intermarriage has typically been written as a footnote both to histories of the overseas Chinese family and of relations between Chinese and white women in Australia. In part this absence is because of methodological difficulties in uncovering a past that was little written about by contemporary sources and, as the gates of White Australia closed and racial definitions and boundaries tightened post-1901, was often hidden within families themselves." (Bagnall, 2002, p.1)

This is certainly true in the Gye family. A letter from Joy Thibault to Leslie McLeod written in 1991 claims that Wong Ah Gye, who had anglicised his name to Charles Wong Gye, "was listed as a 'gentleman' and according to Dad had a large property in the South Island where he bred thoroughbred horses".