Australian South Sea Islanders are strong, proud and resilient people who call Australia home. Many small communities can be found along the Queensland coastline and down into northern New South Wales. Each community has their own diverse history and every individual has their own sense of place and belonging.
For over 150 years Australian South Sea Islanders and their ancestors have been contributing to Queensland’s cultural landscape. A hidden and significant history that is at times traumatic. The 25th anniversary is a call for Australian South Sea Islanders to honour our South Sea Islander ancestors and to embrace the continuing strength of the contemporary Australian South Sea Islander identity.
Australian South Sea Islanders’ unique history and identity has strong connections to their ancestors’ home island nations of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, New Ireland and Milne Bay Provinces in Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and Tuvalu. However, Australian South Sea Islanders are not indigenous to anywhere.
Australian South Sea Islanders are the descendants of South Sea Islanders who were sourced as cheap labour for the Australian sugar and cotton industries between 1863 and 1904. Many Islanders were blackbirded, and others came by choice. Blackbirding is the term given to the practice of using force, trickery and kidnapping to entice Islanders aboard the labour vessels. Islanders arrived on ships in Queensland ports, auctioned off, and forced to work on plantations clearing land and planting sugar cane along the eastern coastline.
In the early years of the labour trade there were reports about the harsh treatment of South Sea Islanders. Eventually legislation was introduced to control the labour trade and the movement of South Sea Islanders. The Polynesians Labourers Act 1868 was enacted to protect South Sea Islanders from ill treatment and exploitation. This was soon followed by the Pacific Islanders Protection Act 1872 which provided government agents on labour vessels to ensure stricter procedures of recruitment and the banishing of blackbirding practices. Several acts of legislation including the Pacific Islander Labourers Act 1880 in Queensland controlled the movement of South Sea Islanders including where they worked and what they were allowed to have for rations, food, clothing and shelter.
South Sea Islanders experienced exploitation and discrimination in conditions akin to slavery. The conditions in Queensland were unforgiving with men, women and children living and working in harsh conditions. They worked long hours, changed their diets, social structures, languages, and battled new diseases. The death rate was high and many were unrecorded. Far from their island homes they began a new way of life — a new way of living.
62,000 indentured labour contracts were issued to Islanders and by 1901 approximately 10,000 South Sea Islanders resided in Queensland.
The ‘indentured’ contract system governing the employment of South Sea Islanders stated that Islanders would be engaged on three-year labour contracts, paid approximately £6 per year and only at the end of the contract — one third the amount paid to other labourers. Due to the lack of policing, reports from descendants described some Islanders being paid little to no wage. Once contracts were completed Islanders returned home or were re-engaged for a further six months to three years.
For 40 years South Sea Islanders worked and lived in the Queensland landscape, creating a livelihood, families and small communities. Eventually some Islanders were farming their own cane, all with the aim of creating a better life.
However, the Federal Government introduced the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, commonly known as the White Australia Policy. It was designed to prohibit all non-European migrants from Australia. This was soon followed by other racially discriminating legislation including the Pacific Islander Labourers Act 1901 ordering the recruitment of South Sea Islanders to finish after 1903 and permitted the deportation of South Sea Islanders back to their home islands. These acts of legislation eventually set the platform for the deportation of South Sea Islanders living in Australia — the largest legislated mass deportation in Australia’s history.
The policies and legislation overarching the deportation of South Sea Islanders discriminated against people based on particulars, such as their gender, skin colour, intellect, and place of origin. Deportation of South Sea Islanders began in 1906 until 1908.
The deportation process was surrounded in controversy with many family stories of mistreatment and Islanders being left at places which were not their home islands.
A Royal Commission into the deportation of South Sea Islanders was held in 1906 with the intention to investigate the most efficient and humane way of deporting Islanders to their home islands, and when done, whether there would be enough labour to service the industries in which Islanders had worked.
Testimonies were gathered from people who participated in 40 sittings in 27 major sugar centres in Queensland from Nerang to Port Douglas.
The South Sea Islander community, dispersed as it was at the time, rallied together and organised themselves to proactively petition the government for Islanders who did not wish to leave Queensland. There were a number of petitions from the Rockhampton and Mackay districts.
In 1906, the Pacific Islanders’ Association based in Mackay and included Proserpine and Bowen districts organised a petition to review the deportation of South Sea Islanders. Two South Sea Islanders, Henry Tonga and Alick Mallicoola, went to Melbourne to deliver the petition to the then Prime Minister Alfred Deacon, in the hope to convince him to make amendments to the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act 1901 to include more criteria for exemption. The same petition was sent to then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill to protest deportation of the remaining Islanders. Eventually changes to the exemption criteria for deportation were expanded to include those who were in Queensland before 1 September 1879; those who had been living in Queensland for 20 years or more; those who were of extreme age or suffering from illness that would prevent them from making a living in the islands; those who had married women from other islands or places; and those who were owners of freehold land.
In 1908, at the end of the deportation period, approximately 1700 Islanders remained in Queensland. Today, Australian South Sea Islanders are the descendants of those who were able to stay. For many who returned to their home islands, their stories and experiences in Queensland have been largely forgotten.
After deportation those who remained continued to experience discrimination and exploitation from the wider community. South Sea Islanders were heavily legislated against, making it difficult for Islanders to work in agricultural industries including the sugar industry they helped to create.
There are many stories of kindness shown to South Sea Islanders including some farmers who continued to secretly use Islander labour, despite financial and criminal penalties.
From 1910 to the 1970’s, South Sea Islanders were no longer the focus of conversation and almost became invisible in the landscape. South Sea Islanders moved to the fringes of many coastal townships to create small communities in isolated areas.
It is during this time when Australian-born South Sea Islander children began to shape their new identity in Queensland, living a shared experience with the wider community in the ‘Missing Years’. Education, religion and eventually sport played an important role in the community during this time.
Many small communities began to form across Queensland where South Sea Islanders made homes and created sustainable ways of living, growing market gardens, hunting and fishing for food. Over the decades these places became small safe havens for South Sea Islander families and for Islanders who regularly travelled across Queensland and interstate looking for work in the agricultural, pastoral, railway and mining industries. There are countless recollections of people working the sugar and then in the off season heading south to pick fruit interstate or west to work on cattle and sheep stations. These work patterns continued up until the 2000s.
The road to recognition was paved by Australian- born South Sea Islanders including the children and grandchildren of the original South Sea Islanders.
From the 1970s, the community joined together to lobby the government for formal recognition and acknowledgement of our unique identity, history, heritage, culture and significant contribution to the Australian society. Various reports documented and highlighted the disadvantage of Australian-born South Sea Islanders. Born in Australia with little direct connection to ancestral home islands and not Indigenous to anywhere our cultural and spiritual connections are tied to each other and the landscapes where we gathered.
On 25 August 1994 ,the Australian Government officially recognised Australian South Sea Islanders as a unique cultural group. A monumental achievement by the community and set
the foundations to campaign other governments and institutions. On 7 September 2000, the Queensland Government officially recognised the contributions made by South Sea Islanders and their descendants to Queensland’s social, economic, political, and cultural landscape. More importantly, state recognition went further to acknowledge the discrimination, disadvantage, and prejudice the Australian South Sea Islander community had experienced and continue to endure today.
Australian South Sea Islanders celebrate these significant dates with cultural celebrations. It is an important time to come together to remember our ancestors and to share our history with the wider community.
Australian South Sea Islanders’ resilience to overcome adversity is evident in the strength, determination and humility of the people and the community. Humour and laughter have provided the necessary smoke screen to hide pain, sadness and trauma.
Since the Australian Government’s recognition 25 years ago,
the Australian South Sea Islander community has continued to explore and tell their own stories. Landmarks and sites of cultural significance have been mapped and written about by various communities in an attempt to record, document, and share South Sea Islander history and heritage with the wider community — creating more of a presence in the physical landscape. Churches, meeting places, unmarked graves, family homes, fishing spots, market gardens and once vibrant communities have become sites of significance and places of remembrance to the community.
In the face of mistreatment and discrimination, Australian South Sea Islanders and their ancestors, our ancestors, fought for human rights, to have an education, and to make a contribution to the community so that we may have a better life, and most importantly the right to tell our own stories.
For 150 years our experiences continued to be handed down generation to generation through storytelling. 2013 marked the 150th anniversary of South Sea Islanders’ arrival in Queensland. The Australian South Sea Islander communities in Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Ayr, Townsville and Cairns marked the occasion with celebrations and memorial events.
Today, the Australian South Sea Islander identity is growing stronger with members of the younger generation connecting with Elders and reclaiming their history and stories. We are now empowered to have agency over our cultural identity and cultural expression and continue to express it as visual artists, musicians, photographers, performers, writers and community representatives at gatherings from celebrations to sporting events.
Australian South Sea Islanders are part of a living culture — evolving and thriving in communities across Queensland. Our histories and our identity continue to grow, adapt and change.
Descendants of the Australian South Sea Islanders Inc (DASSI) is a volunteer run non-for-profit community organisation which seeks to promote Australian South Sea Islander history, heritage and culture in the Sunshine Coast region — an area where South Sea Islanders worked in canefields from Buderim to Yandina. In more recent times it has been home to many more South Sea Islander families.
The ‘Old Place’, Lot 71, located on the banks of the Maroochy River is home to generations of Australian South Sea Islanders. Their cultural and spiritual connection dates from the late 1800s. Used by families, workers, and travellers as they moved between plantations hugging the coast of Queensland. The ‘Old Place’ was a place to live, holiday, and connect with others. The landscape has engulfed much of the physical remnants of the once vibrant community but fond memories live on in childhood reminiscences of fishing, crabbing, and fun times with family. Today, Australian South Sea Islanders are reconnecting with the land and each other and reclaiming their history of the ‘Old Place’.
Descendants of the Australian South Sea Islanders (DASSI) would like to acknowledge that 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of national recognition of Australian South Sea Islanders by the Australian Government on the 25 August 1994 — an historic occasion for the Australian South Sea Islander community to be remembered and celebrated.
“My grandparents were slaves… and there’s a lot of Australians that don’t even know there was slavery in Australia and quite a few of them are shocked. So I am really proud to be an Australian South Sea Islander but I’m also proud to be an Australian”
– Sonny Byquar