Shong Foon Nomchong arrived in Australia in the 1860s and was a storekeeper on the Mongarlowe goldfields, later setting up a store in Braidwood He sent for his brother Chee Dock, who was living in California, in 1877 and the two men became business partners. In 1881 he married Ellen Lupton, a European woman; they had four children. After Shong Foon's death in 1889, the Mongarlowe business was sold and Chee Dock concentrated his business activities in Braidwood. He married a Chinese woman and became the patriarch of a large family with responsibility for Shong Foon's family as well as his own. Chee Dock's family were adherents of the Roman Catholic church and very highly respected in the town and district.