Further along there was the kitchen where Hing butchered and giggled and beyond that the dining room.

And there is Goon at the little table by the courtyard door. "Roll up," he calls, and everyone, all the Wongs, all the lonely single men, all nod and smile at Goon Tse Ying who was a rich man even then and respected because of it.

He had a great moon face with a high forehead and thin black hair that lifted in the slightest breeze. He had big shoulders, strong calves (which he displayed when called upon to sit) and, in Wong's at least, amongst his own kind, a voice like a gravel-crusher. Although he was in his late thirties when he adopted me it is misleading to mention it because he could look much younger and – when dressed in that formidable English suit – much older.

"I will teach you everything," Goon told me. "I will teach you how to skin a crow by blowing air into it with a piece of bamboo. I will teach you how to fight with your feet, my little Englishman," he hissed.

I sat in Wong's and was terrified. My head was full of my father's visions, his cannon balls, his patented breach locks, his naked coastline. His blue prophet's eyes looked at the ducks' feet Goon gave me to eat and saw, instead, the hands of babies.

I was not alone in my nervousness. The other Chinese did not want me there either. They did not approve of Goon Tse Ying adopting Englishmen. They were frightened of the consequences but Goon was a rich man and a natural force whose very laugh could move the brass chimes above the family table.

"I will teach you how to use garlic and ginger to remove pains from the head. I will teach you to read and write. I will teach you everything. Five languages," Goon Tse Ying said, "because I was once an orphan too. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said.

I had never sat at a table without a cloth. I had never heard mah-jong tiles clatter. I had never seen children treated kindly, touched, petted and embraced so readily. The Wong children were all younger than I was. They came and stared at me with huge brown eyes. When the sight of me made them cry they were not slapped. And – ducks' feet and dried fish included – it was this that was the most exotic thing in Wong's cafe.

"You will come to the herbalist's with me and I will make you a scholar of herbs. I will teach you to shoe a horse. I will teach you to make money. You will polish your boots like I show you. Why am I doing this for you, little Englishman?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"Roll up," roared Goon Tse Ying. "Roll up, roll up. Look at them," he indicated the men playing mah-jong in the corner. "They are in gaol. They have locked themselves up in Wong's. They have made themselves prisoners. They give Wong all their money and Wong feeds them and buys what they need at the shops. They cannot speak English. They do not know what 'roll up' means. I say it and they smile. They nod at me. They think I am moon-touched, but they know I am rich. They respect me and think I am dangerous. I buy them presents because they are lonely and unhappy. Next week I will give poor Hing fifty pounds so he can have a bride come out from China. He does not know. You watch."

"Hing," he shouted in English. "Next month I give you fifty pounds."

Hing, sitting on a chair by the kitchen servery, looked up from his newspaper, took the sodden cigarette from his mouth and gave a stained smile.

"See," Goon Tse Ying said. "He does not know what I am saying. He does not know the meaning of 'fifty pounds' or 'roll up' either. Tell me, my pet Englishman, what is the meaning of 'roll up'?"

I didn't know.

"Pour me brandy, little Englishman, and eat your soup. It will warm your heart and make you forget this terrible country. Why am I kind to you?"

"Because you were an orphan, sir."

"No," Goon said quietly. His voice became soft, amber, vaporous as the brandy on his foreign breath. "It is to show I am not a barbarian like them."

In my confusion I thought he was referring to the Chinese.

"You will sleep here," Goon Tse Ying told me. "I have arranged with Wong. You will share a room with old Hing and his nephew. Hing will cook your meals. In the morning I will come and get you and we will sit at the herbalist's. He does not speak English but he is a good herbalist. I am helping him out for a while, to translate for him. He is a silly man to have bought the business with no English and I don't know what will happen to him when I leave."

My bedroom was on the other side of the muddy courtyard, a long lean-to made from corrugated iron with an earth floor. I could not shut my eyes. Hing coughed all night. His nephew snored. I cried in the dark, assailed by garlic and the sweet smell of Hing's evening pipe.

When, at last, I did sleep, I dreamed the Chinese came and ate my hands.

The herbalist was Mr Chin, the uncle of the Mr Chin to whom I would later sell my snakes. He was very handsome with his blue waving hair and his gold tooth but when he saw me his forehead scarred itself with a frown as messy as a bulldog's. Goon Tse Ying listened to what Mr Chin had to say and then he explained to me that I would not be permitted to sit in the consulting room. This was because all of Mr Chin's patients were English gentlemen and ladies and they would be embarrassed, Goon told me sternly, to repeat their complaints in front of a boy.

So I never learned the art of herbalism, nor, for that matter, did I master any of the five languages Goon had promised, although I did learn to count from one to ten in Hokein.

Goon was neither embarrassed nor apologetic about this setback. He announced that I was to return to the Eastern Markets and learn about vegetables. He himself had been a hawker in the Palmer River rush in Northern Queensland.

It is the nature of childhood to continually encounter things one does not understand, to be thrown here, to be put there, to offend without meaning to, to be praised without understanding why, and I do not remember being unduly unhappy to be sent to the Eastern Markets.

I remember the cold, the paraffin lamps in the early mornings, the chatter of Wong Li Ho, the spitting of Nick Wong. I remember the red-faced Scot with big ears who roared the virtues of his cabbages from dawn till afternoon, the gaunt women with red fingers protruding from their dirty mittens. I remember knocking my chilblains against boxes of cauliflowers. I remember bags of potatoes I could not lift. But most of all I remember that no one hit me and that when noon arrived I was permitted to depart and then I would walk up through the busy streets to Nicholson Street in Carlton and wait for Goon Tse Ying. When the last consultation was finished he would take me by the hand and escort me back to the cafe within whose walls, it seemed, there was contained everything in the world I would need to know.

In the muddy courtyard, amidst indignant hens, he not only taught me how to fight with my feet but also how to skin a crow by putting a nick in its neck, inserting a bamboo rod between skin and flesh, and blowing. Both of these skills were useful to me in later life. He took me to the kitchen and showed me how to make soup from the crow. He sat me on his knee while Hing butchered a pig and showed me how every part of it could be used for food.

He took me to the front office to instruct me in abacus, but, finding Wong busy with it, demonstrated the pressure points of the body instead, showing me how these could be used to immobilize an opponent. While Wong entered the single men's wages into his ledger, Goon Tse Ying taught me to stand in such a way that I would appear bigger than I was, or, conversely, how to appear smaller. Wong did not complain once. There was such clutter in this dark front room, such a tangle of rope and canvas, incense for jossing, shoes for horses, even a monkey foetus in a bottle of green liquid whose purpose I never discovered, such a disorder of goods, such a tangle of raffia, that the presence of a noisy rich man and a quiet sharp-faced boy did nothing extra to distract him from the wonderful order of his ledgers.