Category Archives: Blackbirding

Press Release for Launch of Hardwork: Australian South Sea Islanders Bibliography.

PROFESSOR CLIVE MOOREIt is hypocritical of the Morrison Government to assure Pacific Islands nations of Australia’s good intentions when the Australian Government has never dealt adequately with problems within its own Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) community. Two major issues have been caused by the Australian Government.

One dates back to Federation: the deportation of the majority of original Islanders in the 1900s as part of the White Australia Policy. This was an attempt to remove an entire ethnic group—to cleanse the new nation of its Pacific immigrants. The second issue is inadvertent but none the less damaging. It relates to public service initiatives aimed at assisting Indigenous Australians since the 1960s.

The three governments need to take into consideration that policies aimed at assisting First Australians have damaged the ASSI community. The 1967 referendum enabled the Commonwealth to take control of Indigenous affairs and count First Peoples in the national census. The creation of a modern bureaucracy to administer First Peoples’ affairs led to the alienation of ASSI, both at the level of actions by the public service and by definitions which left them outside schemes to provide special assistance.

While no one begrudges the overdue special assistance to Indigenous Australians, it has had inadvertent consequences in straining relationships at an individual, family, community and government level. Today’s ASSI are descended from immigrants with strong kin links to Indigenous Australians. ASSI were once considered an integral part of the Australian Black community. Yet today they are categorized as immigrants, ignoring the similar issues they face with their First Australian brothers and sisters, and their close kin relations with First Australians.

Hardwork, a bibliography of over 1,400 sources on Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI), has been released as part of celebrations marking the first arrival of ASSI in NSW in 1847 and in Queensland in 1860. The Australian, Queensland and New South Wales Governments will find its useful in their considerations.

I have prepared the bibliography at a time when Indigenous Queenslanders in July 2019 were awarded $190 million as a settlement relating to Hans Pearson v State of Queensland in the Federal Court of Australia. The Queensland Government made a settlement and avoided a final Federal Court decision, although the Federal Court will supervise the financial distribution.

This was a class action to recover wages taken from Indigenous Queenslanders over several decades, which detailed the extraordinary and draconian conditions under which Indigenous Queenslanders were forced to live, and the Acts of Parliament which controlled their lives.

The original immigrant ASSI and their children were also bound by Acts of Parliament passed specifically to control their lives, and a 1901 Commonwealth Act aimed at total deportation of all ASSI. There are many similarities between the conditions faced by ASSI and Indigenous Queenslanders. This is not the place to argue the case; in a sense the whole Hardwork bibliography does that in outline.

Over recent years, there have been discussions between lawyers and ASSI associations over the possibility of mounting a class action. These discussions will continue, now in part fuelled by the July 2019 award by the Queensland Government. Hardwork documents many of the necessary sources. The misuse of the wages of dead Islanders held in the Pacific Islanders Fund and the possible misuse of Islander bank accounts—just as with similar funds belonging to Indigenous Queenslanders—may yet drive a class action against both the Queensland and Australian Governments.

Although most of the abuse was at the hands of the Queensland Government, the Australian Government is implicated because it used Queensland’s Fund to pay for the deportation process in the 1900s. ASSI intermarriage with both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples adds complexity, as could the involvement of various Pacific Islands’ nations in any class action.

This year NAIDOC Week had three themes: Voice, Treaty and Truth. The truth needs to be told about Indigenous Australians, but also about immigrant Pacific Islander descendants from the Blackbirding years. If I can nudge the governments into owning up to their past and their responsibilities to the present ASSI generation, all the better.

One basic suggestion is that it would useful if the historical sources could be collected in one place and housed in a library so that ASSI can have easy access. Digital access should be easy to accomplish to enhance the availability. As part of this, all ASSI oral history collections should be made available as part of building understanding within and of the community.

There is much more to do in acknowledging Australia’s past relations with the Pacific Islands. Pacific nations realise this, although all Australian governments remains shy of their responsibilities. My challenge to all three governments is to be honest and to help heal past damage if they truly want a good relationship with their Pacific neighbours.

Clive Moore
Emeritus Professor
School of historical and Philosophical Inquiry
The University of Queensland

Press Release for Launch of Hardwork: Australian South Sea Islanders Bibliography:

1. DOWNLOAD : a copy of this Press Release (100kb pdf file) HERE.

2. DOWNLOAD : your copy of: HARDWORK: AUSTRALIAN SOUTH SEA ISLANDER BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE SUGAR INDUSTRY AND THE PACIFIC LABOUR TRADE (1.6mb pdf file)

Daily Mercury story on South Sea Islander slave labour

Daily Mercury story South Sea Islander slave labour

Daily Mercury: Mackay and District Australian South Sea Islander Association’s Starrett Vea Vea hopes for more commitments from government to his community.


10th Nov 2016 – The Daily Mercury, Mackay ran an interesting article entitled EXPOSED: Lost history of South Sea Islanders slave labour. The article talks about Blackbirding in Queensland, growing up in North Mackay and going to school with many descendants of those who were blackbirded.

State Member for Pumicestone Rick Williams has sponsored a petition calling for a formal apology to the South Sea Islander community for forcing up to 62,000 people into the indentured labour trade known as ‘Blackbirding’, which was akin to slavery.

The petition currently has only 110 signatures. Mr Williams needs to secure 10,000 by February to ensure it is read in Parliament.

We emplore everyone to sign the petition to help with this goal.

Go to the Queensland Parliament website, click on ‘petitions’ and go to ‘current e-petitions‘ and look for ‘Australian South Sea Islanders – formal apology’ in the list.

Click the name and then click ‘YES’ next to “Do you wish to sign this E-Petition?”

You can read the full Daily Mercury story South Sea Islander slave labour by CLICKING HERE

Sugar Slaves

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On the 25th of August 1994, the Commonwealth Government officially recognised descendants of Australia’s blackbirding trade as a “Distinct Cultural Group”.

The Salvation Army‘s Freedom Partnership – to End Modern Slavery, and the Australian South Sea Islanders Port Jackson (ASSIPJ) invite you to join us as we remember an important period of history unknown by many Australians today about the practice of blackbirding which is akin to the slavery of some 62,000 Melanesian labourers taken from 80 Pacific islands mainly within Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.

We will be screening the documentary “Sugar Slaves” and hosting conversations around the impacts on Australian descendants of the trade in creating a greater understanding of our community integration via coastal, mainland workstations and plantations firstly to NSW in 1847 (by Benjamin Boyd), with an influx to Queensland between 1863-1908.

Discussions will be joined by Emeritus Professor Clive Moore (UQ), founding board members of ASSIPJ – Emelda Davis (president) and Shireen Malamoo. Also sharing in conversation will be Pearl Wymarra.

Light refreshment will be served with an ambience of Tanna Island music in the lead up to discussions around our shared history.

Date: Thursday 25 August
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: Salvation Army HQ
261-265 Chalmers St, Redfern

John Mackay – Blackbirder

John Mackay - Blackbirder

This weekend Australian South Sea Islanders are holding WANTOK in Mackay, the last of three national workshops aimed at bringing together the diverse Islander community. The first of their ancestor were brought to Mackay in 1867, just a few years after the founding of the settlement in 1860.

What few Mackay residents realise is that John Mackay, a leading member of John Macrossan’s 1860 expedition which “discovered” the Pioneer Valley, went on to work in the labour trade and that Mackay, the city, owes its name to a Blackbirder.

Born in 1839, as a young man John Mackay was involved in mining, exploration and pastoral ventures. He stocked Greenmount run in the valley but had to sell out in 1863. Mackay had previously served on one Pacific voyage as a purser while still in his teens, which led him to gain his master’s certificate in 1865 and for the next eighteen years he commanded various ships in the Pacific trade. A Captain of several vessels recruiting Melanesian labourers, one was Sir Isaac Newton in 1868 on a voyage bringing Melanesian labourers to Gladstone. Records also suggest that he was twice master and recruiter on Queensland vessel the Flora in 1875.

He was also on another voyage, either that of the Daphne or the Carl, and was master of Waiau in the Fiji labour trade. John Mackay also spent some years in Fiji on a sugar plantation before becoming harbour master in Cooktown (1892-1902).

Back in 1978 and 1979 when this labour trade connection was aired in the pages of the Daily Mercury, his granddaughter Margaret Mackay defended what the family believed to be the honour of John Mackay (D.M. 25-4-1979). A trip, thought to be on the Daphne, was discussed. The 1868 Australian Daphne  voyage is well known because of a NSW Royal Commission and there is no evidence that John Mackay on this voyage.

The Mackay family has correspondence from Archibald Watson, later a professor of anatomy in Adelaide, who worked as crew on the Carl in 1871-72. In 1914 Watson wrote to John Mackay saying that had he not used the ship’s guns, the vessel would certainly have been taken and all on board killed. To avoid prosecution, Watson left for Europe straight after the Carl voyage. The Carl made two voyages recruiting for Fiji. The first was the most horrific voyage in the Melanesian labour trade. Fifty Islander recruits were shot and about twenty were wounded on the ill-fated voyage. Was John Mackay on board, and if not when did he turn a ship’s guns on Islanders?

John Mackay was badly treated by the Queensland government. In 1864 the Governor had promised to give him a financial recompense for his part in discovering the Pioneer Valley, but the government never honoured this pledge. John Mackay protested this on several occasions, and this is probably why in later years he presented himself as leader of the 1860 expedition. Evidence from the Macrossan family suggests that John Macrossan was the real leader.

As chairman of the Queensland Marine Board (1902-12) and finally harbour master of Brisbane until his death in 1914 he became a venerable figure, held in high regard, but in the 1860s and 1870s he was a young man seeking his fortune on land and at sea.

The 1860s Queensland labour trade was confined to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and the Loyalty Islands (now in New Caledonia). Historians believe that there was a great amount of deception and trickery involved and that kidnapping and violence was rife in the early years, although not universal. Many of the labour recruits from the Loyalty Islands and southern New Hebrides had already worked as crews on inter-island shipping.

The word Blackbirding is used to describe the early years of the labour trade. Even by his family’s admission, John Mackay was involved in at least one very violent incident, and there were official French protests over the Sir Isaac Newton voyage.

John Mackay deserves to be remembered as a 1860s explorer and pastoralist, but let us also remember that, similar to Robert Towns, founder of Townsville, his name is connected to the Blackbirding years.

Professor Clive Moore will be speaking at Wantok on Day 2 of the program Saturday the 29th March in his capacity as an advisor to the Australian south Sea Islanders (Port Jackson) historical panel in also sharing Mackay Births Deaths and Marriages Register as well as DATSIMA finding family record complimented with a Q&A.

For interviews call Professor Clive Moore mobile: 0419 676 123
University of Queensland

The complete WANTOK 2014 program can be downloaded HERE.

Photo courtesy of The National Library of Australia

John Mackay – Blackbirder Posted 27 March 2014.