BLACKBIRDING, THE CAUSE FOR AN APOLOGY.

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 19^th 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 - 19^th Century, to the early 20^th 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.