aruislands

Sketty Belle (ship, 1877) Type: Pearling schooner Completed: 1877 History 1877 Named 'Crest of the Wave Official number: 74939 Port: Sydney Owner: John Saunders 1898 Owner: George Smith 1900 or 1901 Renamed Sketty Belle; Flag: Australia Port: Sydney Owner: George Smith 1907 No longer in register Source commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sketty_Belle_(ship,_1877)

Pearling became the largest industry in far north Queensland in the 1890s and had a massive impact on coastal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It was the only industry ever exempted from the provisions of the White Australia policy because it was the economic pillar supporting the far north with cheap labour from the South Pacific and Asia. Its legacy is a history of mixed populations in the far north that defies the standard historical image of a white Australia. Source: www.qhatlas.com.au/content/pearling

Pearling has been carried out in Indonesian waters from very early times, with local divers collecting the shell. Some of the Indonesian divers went a con-siderable distance in search of shell. As Europeans extended their presence in the north of Australia, they saw Indonesians collecting pearls in Australian waters. The Aru Islands have been, and still are, one of the principal pearl-shell grounds in Indonesia. Al-though quite off the track of all European trade, these islands had by the early 19th century become the eastern terminus for the annual fleet of Bugis prahus from Ma-kassar (The Buginese are traders and seaborne colonists from south Sulawesi; see map, Fig. 2.) They were a source not only of pearls and mother-of-pearl, hut of such exotics as birds of paradise, tortoiseshell, trepang or sea slug, and edible birds’ nests. The British naturalist Alfred Wallace did the 1000-mile journey to the remote islands in a Bugis prahu in the 1850s (Fig. 4) and considered it quite an achieve-ment. “Even by the Makassar people themselves the voyage to the Aru Islands is looked upon as a rather wild and romantic expedi-tion, full of novel sights and strange adventures. He who has made it is looked up to as an authority, and it remains with many the unachieved ambition of their lives. I myself had hoped rather than expected ever to reach this “Ultima Thule” of the East…” (Wallace 1869:309). Source: www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/sampans-belangs-and-junkos/