What Goes Round.....

Image from Queensland Government Archives

Between 1863 and 1904 about 60,000 Pacific islanders were transported to the then colony of Queensland, where they were put to work creating sugar plantations. The Islanders were generally coerced to board the traders' ships, and were often paid in trinkets for their labour, because, as one prominent blackbirder was reported as saying - "These people are savages and have no understanding of the value of money".

The mortality rate for these Islanders was about 30%, not dissimilar for African slaves to the Americas. You can read the history and make up your own mind as to whether these men were conscripted labourers or slaves.

By the 1870s, "recruiting" of South Sea Islanders had become an established industry with labour vessels from across eastern Australia obtaining Kanakas (the term used for South Sea Islanders, a term now considered offensive) for both the Queensland and Fiji markets. many of these people came from the Solomons.

Legislation was passed to end the South Sea Islander labour trade in 1890 but it was not effectively enforced. Eventually, the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (part of a larger White Australia Policy), made it illegal to import South Sea Islanders During the period when Blackbirding persisted, thousands of these workers died, either on the voyages to Queensland, or after arrival, often as a consequence of diseases and the conditions.

As a child growing up in North Queensland in the fifties, I went to school with the descendants of these people, some of whom remained after the trade was outlawed, and made lives for themselves in the areas where sugar was grown. They were usually pretty good footballers. Mal Meninga was one notable example.

A memorial has been built at Corser Street, Polson Cemetery, Point Vernon, in Hervey Bay, to commemorate this dark history.

It's hardly remarkable, in the light of this history, that the people of the Solomons (or at least their government) aren't head over heels in love with Australia. Perhaps this history is one of many factors which conspired to encourage the Solomons to sign a security agreement with China.

Somehow, in the middle of the controversy and outrage, these events have been completely forgotten by most Australians.

I very much doubt the Solomon Islanders (and many other descendants of the Islanders who were indentured from other parts of the Pacific) have forgotten them.