BLACKBIRDING
Looking at Australia’s dark past.
By Frances Harris
In the wake of the
Australian Government apology to the country’s indigenous Australians, South
Sea Islanders and some mainstream Australians have called on the government to
do the same for the South Sea Islanders who were brought under duress to Australia
to work on plantations in the late 19th Century. Since many of them
could not understand the English language, there was wide latitude for
deception and exploitation when enticing the islanders onto ships bound for
Australia’s work sites. Many of them would fall victim to the black birding
trade, some deceived with gifts and trinkets, some brought on board ships
through their natural curiosity, then forcibly retained on ships that set sail taking
them from the Islanders villages. When Islanders paddled their canoes and boats
out to meet incoming vessels, crew would in some cases sink their boats and
drag the occupants on board, in their haste to meet quotas.
The pearl diving trade
followed in the footsteps of the plantation owners, taking Pacific Islanders
and indigenous populations from desert areas in the Northern of Queensland and locally
to harvest pearls under dangerous and arduous conditions. Because of poor and
unsanitary living and workplace conditions added to long hard hours of work, in
both industries many of them died.
For over 40 years, starting
from the mid - 19th Century, to the early 20th Century,
indigenous Pacific Islander workers were gathered up using these questionable recruitment
practices, to work in the cane fields of Queensland and other sites. They came
from places like Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and the Loyalty
Islands of New Caledonia and Niue. Some say 62,000 South Sea Islanders were put
on ships to Australia, a percentage died on the way due to maltreatment and others
from unsanitary conditions on board, although the true tally will never be
known.
The British and Queensland
Governments attempted unsuccessfully to regulate the trade and assigned
military vessels to check the conditions and the numbers of Pacific islanders
on board the loaded transport ships. The problem with military oversight was
that ships carrying more than their quota of Islanders, would throw them
overboard to reduce numbers to required levels when approached. Legislated
required that Melanesian labourers were to be recruited for three years, paid
three hundred pounds per year, issued basic clothing and given access to the
company store for supplies. This was wishful thinking on the part of Governments
because employers knew many ways to circumvent the system.
With Federation and the
introduction of the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act 1901, and the White
Australian Policy, reluctantly Queensland joined the rest of the colonies by
repatriating the majority of black birded labourers from Australia. Deportation
was carried out from 1901 to 1906, leaving behind a settled population of Pacific
Islanders in Queensland coastal towns. A significant number, in the vicinity of
4.500 upwards, had settled in Bundaberg near the cane fields. 2013 has marked
150 years since the beginning of black birding in the Queensland sugar
industry. Islanders were brought from the Pacific Islands to the Burnett River
in Bundaberg to be sold there in the slave trade market. Very few Australians
to this day realise we have had an active slave trade in the country.
Currently many Pacific
Islander communities have formed organised groups that are actively seeking to
uncover the stories of their lost family members. They are also searching for any
lineages of descendants of those who never returned home.
The fact that an apology
was given to the stolen generations of indigenous Australians, providing emotional
relief for them and their families, it does not seem unreasonable the
Australian Government should also apologise to Pacific Islanders for coerced
slavery. They are not looking for monetary compensation, but suggestions have
been made that Australia’s restrictions on employment opportunities for existing
Islanders should be relaxed. No decision has been made to date.
