137

NOEL FATNOWNA AND HIS BOOK: the making of Fragments of a Lost Heritage"

Clive Moore University of Queensland

FRAGMENTS OF A LOST HERITAGE was launched at the Pacific History Associa tion Conference in Brisbane in 1989 . None present will forget Noel Fatnowna's eloquent oration. He held his academic audience spellbound, playing them theatrically in the Australian version of classic Melanesian Bigman style, totally in control. Fragments is the most reliable and readable account of the several written by descendants of Queensland Kanakas,l and adds considerably to the already extensive literature on the Queensland labour trade (see Moore 1992: 79-86; Munro 1995a). Yet Noel was no academic and his book is not a normal product of academic scholarship.2 It is a spoken text, dictated not written, and it is full of larrikin irreverence and good humour, tempered I always with great pride in his Solomon Islands heritage, and a determination to succeed in Australian society. My copy of Fragments bears two inscriptions which encapsulate my relationship with the book. :The firsl is by Noel:

To my friend and brother Clive for your help through the years to tell the story of our people in this book. I owe it all to you and Roger Keesing

Your One Talk [Wantok]

Noel F.

• Noel Fatnowna, Fragments of a Lost Heritage, edited by Roger Keesing. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1989. 138 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

The second is by Roger Keesing, the editor of the book:

Thanks for all your help in this project - It has been a collective effort!

Roger 1/7/89

I knew Noel from 1974 until his untimely death in 1991. During those many years of close friendshi p, communication was constant but usually verbal, either face-to-face or by telephone. I treasure the few letters I recei ved from him. None were ever more than 100 words. How then did this man write a 175 page book which is undoubtedly the best account of the Queensland labour trade written by a descendant of the labourers involved? But, first, a word about Noel himself, who was born and bred in the North Queensland sugar town of Mackay. He grew up at Eulberti farm on the Bucasia-Eimeo road in a rural area close to the beach. His father worked for various farmers and his mother did menial chores at the local primary school that their children attended. There were fourteen children but five died in early childhood. Noel was the fifth born and the survivors' childhood days are described in Fragments: a happy time spent in a half-traditional and half-European lifestyle, centred on the family's large bladey-grass houses on the farm, school and church, with plenty of expeditions to the beaches and creeks (Fatnowna 1989: 3-20). Perhaps most important of all was the contact with old Kanaka men and women, the original immigrants. Noel's father, Harry, was a lay-preacher in the Anglican church and later a prime mover in the introduction of Seventh Day Adventism to the Islanders in the 1920s, so the family was always at the centre ofthe Islander community. Today, the Fatnownas are undoubted!y the major South Sea Island family in the Mackay district by sheer numbers and prominence in the local community. Aged twenty-one, Noel joined the local Ambulance as a Bearer, preceded by his brother Norman. For many years they were the only black Ambulance Bearers in Queensland. Noel spent forty-one years in the Queensland Ambulance Service at Noel Fatnowna and His Book 139

Mackay, becoming a Senior Bearer. The Ambulance Service was largely funded through donations: Noel, heavily involved in public relations and the main collector of donations, was known on every farm and by every business. In addition, his work for the church within the South Sea Islander and Aboriginal community, and later as an historian, made him as well known as anyone in the district. At a State level he had long involvement as an adviser to the Queensland government on indigenous health, and he served as Commissioner for Pacific Islanders from 1977 until 1983 (Menzies 1992a, 1992b). In 1982 he was awarded the British Empire Medal. His death in Brisbane on 27 February 1991, after an unsuccessful heart by-pass operation, deprived his family and Australia's South Sea Islander community of a dedicated leader. The book itself is part autobiography but even more it is the history of a Kanaka family spanning three generations. As such it recounts the experiences of Noel's paternal grandfather, K wailiu, from the Rakwane descent group in the Fataleka language area on the east coast of Malai ta, Solomon Islands. Family memory in Queensland and in Malaita says that Kwailiu travelled to Queensland twice: on the first occasion he was kidnapped but on the second he enlisted willingly, though beguiled by a Greek labour trade captain named Tornarus, who remembered him from his earlier trip to Queensland. Little is known of the first period of indenture, except that he served the customary three years, during which he would have received the statutory payment of £6 a year plus food, barracks accommodation and a limited supply of clothes. He returned home to Rakwane and married OrawanifromanotherpartofFataleka. Kwailiure-enlisted while visiting his wife's family in the west as he knew that his own Rakwane peopl.ewould prevent him from returning to Queensland if they could. K wailiu and Ora wani boarded T ornarus's ship with his brother Karai and several other men. Their only son Harry was born at Mackay in 1897. Karai eventually returned to Malaita but Kwailiu never did. Sometime in the 1890s the Rakwane elders sent Fikui, from the senior male line, to Queenland to search out Kwailiu and persuade him to go home. Fikui enlisted on a ship travelling to Bundaberg, presumably working there for three years, then found Kwailiu at Mackay and stayed with him for several years. 140 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

When the mass deportation of Kanakas from Queensland began in 1906 (Corris 1972), Fikui went horne. Kwailiu promised to return eventually but felt that he had to stay longer to lead his people during the difficul t deportation years. Oral history records that Kwailiu and family did try to return but were involved in a shipwreck. The Rakwane thought that the entire family had drowned and although they waited until all deported Malaitans had returned in 1908, eventually they gave up hope. Seven decades later, Kwailiu's descendants sought out the other half of the family in Malaita, which Noel describes in the chapter entitled "Search for my People". When his parents-in-law and his own pare~ts passed away, he says: a great empty feeling came over us. We were now alone, except for our children. It was a terrible feeling. Our parents were dead. It was they who had kept the old ways alive, and taught us what we knew about our people, our customs, our homes, our roots. What would become of our children, of us? Would we someday be just a lotof white blackfellas in Australia? (1989: 57). What complicated Noel's eventual search for his family in Malaita, as will be shown, was that Kwailiu had his name changed to Fatnowna. More correctly the name Fatnowna should be "Fatanowna" or "Fata no hoona", meaning "to lead in talk" or "to ask to corne" in the Fataleka language. Fikui gave him the name when he left Australia.

ROCER KEESING, the editor of Noel's book, was a noted anthropologist of Malaita (from where Noel's forebears carne) who also died unexpectedly, in 1993.3 In his Introduction, Roger described his first meeting with Noel:

Noel greeted me warmly. Five minutes later he had a box of papers and photographs on the floor in front of us, and was talking excitedly about a decadeofresearch on the history of his family and people in Mackay District. He was trying to wri te a book, he told me. But how, he asked me, could he, a man with a limited education and no experience in writing a book, put it Noel Fatnowna and His Book 141

onto paper? How could he produce a book from the materials he had dug out from Islanders and white families, from the experiences of his people as told by the elders-remnants of Kanaka days-in his childhood, from the experiences of his own family, caught between two worlds? (Fatnowna 1989: ix). Roger Keesing went on to explain the manner in which Fragments was prepared for publication. The present paper is intended as an expansion of that explanation. The book itself is a tribute to Noel's deterrniI1ation to write the history of his people for posterity, and to Roger Keesing for using his great academic skills to ensure that Noel's dream carne true, but there are aspects of it that require further explanation. As readers are inclined to take the printed word for granted, believing the veracity of the words, they seldom question how a book was assembled. This is particularly so with any edited manuscript, but of particular interest in the Pacific where, especiall y in earlier decades, much of what appears under the names of Pacific Islanders was 'ghosted' and even substantially altered by expatriate writers - in much the same way that the fine hand of a journalist is behind many an autobiography of prominent sporting personalities. There are also wider issues concerning the relationship between ethnographers and historians and their informants. In a discussion of life histories generated by ethnographic research, Sidney Mintz suggests that the role of the ethnographer differs depending on his or her relationship with the subject of the biographical account: different people say who and what they are - how their lives were lived - in different ways .... [T]he space between personal experiences and the events to which they are attached will be differently constructed in each case. Whatever the space, the ethnographer cannot avoid playing a role in that construction. What the ethnographer thinks of his findings; what his or her relationship to the informant signifies for his findings; what is done with the informant's words and thoughts - such questions take on added meaning when the outcome of the cooperation is the written life of somebody (Mintz 1989: 786). 142 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

Roger Keesing's and my relationship with Noel Fatnowna was as friends and equals, not as ethnographer/historian and informant. When Roger Keesing first met Noel in 1976, he was Professor of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, a position he had taken up two years earlier. A prolific writer and the champion of the Kwaio people of Malaita, Keesing spent a total of eight years among them engaged in field research and produced innumerable articles and several books covering all aspects ofKwaio society. It is a classic case of an anthropologist and a community making each other famous (see Burt 1994: 240). In addition to his work on Fragments, he likewise edited the "self-accounts" of two Malaitans, both very different men, namely 'Elota (Keesing 1978) andJonathan Fifi'i (1989); and in other of his works he presented biographical accounts of Malaitans (Keesing and Corris 1980). His encouragement of Noel Fatnowna (which included Noel going to Canberraasa Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University) and the editing of Fragments, is a continuation of similar themes, restoring agency to Malaitan individuals.4 My own role in the project is less easy to define. LIKE Noel, I was born and bred in Mackay. I left my hometown in 1970 for tertiary studies at Townsville's James Cook University. The topic of my Honours thesis was the transformation of the Mackay sugar industry from the 1880s. In grappling with collecting historical data I soon realised that the only way to get access to the Islanders' experiences was through oral testimony, and using documentary evidence alongside oral testimony. During 1974-75 I was a Tutor in History at James Cook University and I participated, with Patricia Mercer, in a project collecting oral testimony from South Sea Islanders living in north Queensland. In the course of this work, I got to know Noel Fatnowna. There was a natural affinity between the garrulous raconteur, excessively proud of his Melanesian heritage, and the studious grandson of an Irish canecutter. On the surface it was a surprising friendship because I was never close to any Islander at primary or secondary school. My saving grace was that my father carne from Walkerston, a sugar town just outside Mackay, had lived in the district most of his life and knew many of this Noel Fatnowna and His Book 143 generation of Islanders from his school days, sport, and working as a canecutter and stevedore. Never seen as an outsider, I 'belonged' to the district, an advantage that prove invaluable not just in knowing the local geography, landmarks and personalities, but in the difficult task of being accepted by the South Sea Islander community, long alienated from the wider white community by racism and paternalism.5 Noel Fatnowna jumped at the chance to record the history of his people, and assisted me enormously, not least in enabling me to broaden my research to Malaita. I was the initial beneficiary of our relationship. Quite simply, Noel opened doors in Mackay, and through him I made contacts in Malaita. The latter was a result of relatives in Queensland and Malaita linking up with each other after decades of separation. The first Queensland Malaitans to return to their island since the mass deportation of Kanakas in 1906-08 were Willie Bobongie and family in 1973, followed by Noel Fatnowna and family in 1975. Both Willie and Noel were descended from Kwailiu. The visit was reciprocated later that year when Charles Luiramo, one of Noel's close relatives from Malaita, visited Mackay, as did Charles's older brother Ishmael !tea in 1976. I first went to Malaita with Ishmael later that year to begin doctoral research on the labour migration from Malaita to Mackay (published as Moore 1985). My interests also broadened into the myth-history of Fataleka. In the process I gained a second family. My first visit to Malaita was a revelation in that I began to understand the complexities of Melanesian life and thinking in a way that bookish study can never equal. Having revisited the Solomons more than a dozen times, I am still learning. In other words, the writing of Fragments parallels my academic work on the Malaita-Mackay connection. My academic study dovetailed into the Fatnowna family study: one could not have been successful without the other. The Fatnowna/Fataleka connection is at the core of my academic study of Melanesian migration to Mackay. Noel Fatnowna provided my introduction to the Islander families of Mackay and to his own family in Malaila. In return 1completed the essential documentary research to provide conclusive proof for the re-connection between two sides of a family separated for seventy years. After all that time 144 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95 n~ither side wanted to claim, or to have foisted upon them, false relatives. Initially there was an element of scepticism on both sides, but my independent research in Australia and in the Solomon Islands removed these doubts. Without this outside check, strong doubts would still remain, but so much documentary and oral evidence independently cross-checked that there was no reason to hold back on either side. The Fatnowna/Bobongie/Moonie extended family of Mackay is descended from Kwailiu and Orawani. In 1975, Noel followed Willie Bobongie's lead and took his own family to Malaita to link-up with relatives there. Wary of the many people trying to make false claims, he met John Maetia Kaliuae, then a business man based at Auki, the administrati ve cen tre of Malaita. Kaliuae helped with transport and introductions, not then aware that he was closely related to the Australian visitors! Eventually Noel Fatnowna met Charles Luiramo who told him of four men, Kwaitaka, Suali, Milangi and Kwailiu, who had left east Fataleka for Queensland but never returned. Noel recognised the names of the first three: Kwaitaka was his uncle Henry Stevens Quay tucker; Suali was Torn Swali, a close relative from Hervey Bay in Maryborough district who had regularly visited the Fatnowna family at Mackay; and Milangi was a family friend who had lived at Mackay. But Kwailiu, his grandfather, went unrecognised because he had adopted the name Fatnowna. Charles Luiramo was certain that he had located Kwailiu' s descendants so he sent for his older brother Ishmael !tea, recently retired as Government Headman of Fataleka (and soon to be my mentor). Ishmael also knew the name Kwailiu and that of his wife Orawani. He told how Fikui had searched for, found and stayed with Kwailiu at Mackay, and of the shipwreck. The shipwreck is well remembered at Mackay: Kwailiuand his family were rescued, minus their possessions and returned to Mackay. In an interview in 1974, Henry Stephens Quaytucker gave an unsolicited account ofthe shipwreck, which he said involved his father John Fatnowna (Kwailiu) and his wife Maggie (Orawani) and family, plus others whom he named. Further evidence was located among the documentary sources. In the Anglican records at Mackay, Maggie Fatnowna Noel Fatnowna and His Book 145 appears as "Olenena" (1900-1906) and "Olerum" (1906), which, given, the vagaries of European renderings of Melanesians names, suggests "Orawani". Johnny Fatnowna is also called "Kwai" (1906) in those same records. The clinching Australian evidence came from Mary Bikwai of Piabla, Hervey Bay. Born in 1900, she was the adopted daughter of Torn Swali from the Bakwa descent group in east Fataleka. Like most of the other Kanakas who stayed in Australia, Swali had worked in several of the northern sugar towns, including Mackay, but chose to settle in Nambour. Swali visited the Fatnownas regularly up to his death in 1937. When interviewed by Noel Fatnowna and myself in 1977, Mary Bikwai confirmed that Kwailiu and Orawani were indeed John and Maggie Fatnowna.

FRAGMENTS OF A LOST EMPIRE is a remarkable, evocative and accurate account of Noel's family, spanning three generations, the lives led by South Sea Islanders in Mackay, and a personal search for his lost family in Malaita. But it does not begin to explain the intricacies of piecing together the fragments. In the Introduction, Roger Keesing gives a detailed account of how the original manuscript was created from 27 cassette tapes dictated by Noel in 1978 and 1979, and edited into the final version by Roger and Noel in 1985. The book is undoubtedly Noel's. It is full of his humour and his family's stories, skilfully woven by Roger Keesing. Noel's method of dictation was unique. He never managed to get a quiet moment at horne where he was besieged by family and friends. The first tape for the book was actually recorded at my parents' home at Mackay. I prepared a set of questions, which I asked 'off air' and Noel answered on tape. With his technique perfected, Noel made questions / notes for himself, and then answered them on the next 26 tapes. To escape the constant interruptions at home, he would pick up his tape recorder and drive to Eimeo or Bucasia beaches, both of which were integral to his childhood and featured heavily in the book. Thus cocooned, safe and isolated, he stared out over the Coral Sea, his imagination wandering to his beloved Solomon Islands, and recorded the history of the lives of his grandparents and parents in Malaita and Mackay.6 146 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

One strength of the book is the exact ethnographic detail in the text. Roger Keesing' sdeft hand is never visible but nevertheless it is always present, adding a sentence here and there, explaining and clarifying. Especially noteworthy is chapter six, containing customary stories from Fataleka. Noel wanted to be able to give a detailed account of the stories told by his people of their legends. But like all of Australia's second and third generation South Sea Islanders he knew virtually nothing of the mythical and customary tales of his people. He phoned me one day to explain his predicament. I provided transcripts which I had collected painstakingly over several months while in Fataleka in 1976. The result, with a little embellishment from Noel, is a fine chapter, which gives the impression of cultural retention in an area where almost none exists (1989: 21 -32). Fragments relies on Keesing's ethnographic expertise and my Fataleka data to supplement Noel's own knowledge, but the book was influenced by recent findings of Pacific historians. When the tapes were recorded, a substantial amount of historical material had already been published on the Mackay sugar industry and the Islanders. Much of this published material found its way to Noel through me. These sources are not mentioned in the book, and one is left to presume (apart from Roger Keesing's all-too­ brief explanatory notes and the short bibliography) that Noel gathered the material himself. In fact Fragments of a Lost Heritage has an invincible skeleton: documentary primary and secondary sources which I provided to supplement the oral testimony. Noel was quite secretive about his communications with me, so Roger Keesing never realised how much information was flowing between us. When I first met Noel his view on the recruiting process was similar to that of other Australian Islanders: most still regard recruiting as a euphemism for kidnapping, and describe the recruiting voyages as terrible experiences, with the Islanders locked down in the holds for the entire voyage, food thrown down to them, literally mixing with excreta and vomit. Noel was eventually convinced that the recruiting process contained an early kidnapping phase, followed by a more extended period of voluntary enlistment. Kwailiu fits this pattern well: first kidnapped, he later voluntarily made a second trip to Queensland Noel Fatnowna and His Book 147 with his wife, brother and friends. Ralph Shlomowitz's and Carolyn Edmondson's research into mortality rates on Queensland labour trade voyages shows quite conclusively that death rates were low, compared with rates for other immigrants to Australia, and compared with dea th ra tes for Islanders living in Queensland (Edmondson 1984: 86-87; Shlomowitz 1987, 1989: 594-95). As a paramedic, Noel carne to understand that health conditions on board ships, although unpleasant, could not have been as bad as memories suggest. As a result, Fragments presents a modification of his earlier views, tempered by the findings of historians. Noel was also extraordinarily cavalier about exact details and dates. To put it bluntly, it was often difficult to know when his version of a true story ended and fabrication began. The book is ultimately reliable because of Noel Fatnowna's remarkable story-telling ability, Keesing's ethnographic expertise, and my factual corrections and addi tional Fa taleka and Mackay his torical material. This combination of the grandson of Kanaka labourers, an anthropologist and an historian places Fragments head and shoulders above other accounts by descendants of Australia's original South Sea Islanders. While Mintz is correct that the ethnographer (and in this case the historian) cannot help playing a role in the construction of "self-accounts" of this type, the book is essentially Noel Fatnowna's. It stands as a monument to the Islanders' resilience during a discreditable period in Australia's history, and a memorial to the man himself. 14B Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.lB, 1994/95

NOTES

Faith Bandler's accounts are all fictional or semi-fictional (Bandler 1977; Bandler and Fox 1980; Bandler 1984). Mabel Edmund's (1992) autobiography was published by the University of Queensland Press in the Black Australia Writers series.

As if to underline this point, Fragments was never reviewed in an academic journal (for a newspaper review see MacArthur 1990). Moreover, the Journal of Pacific History declined to publish my obituary to Noel Fatnowna, on the grounds thatthis would set a precedent, when in fact JPHhad already published six obituary notices, and one more has since appeared. My obituary to Noel was eventually printed in the Mackay Mercury, 14 March 1991.

3 See the obituary notices in the Pacific History Association Newsletter, 29 (1993), 3-4.

Keesing (1992: 8-28) discusses his writings and the reactions to them. There is a brief assessment of "self-accounts" by Pacific Islanders in Munro 1995b: 93-94.

5 So much so that Australia's Sout:\ Sea Islanders have readily adopted a title "the forgotten people" thatI provided for a seriesofradio programmes in 1978 and the ensuing book (Moore 1979). In 1974 they were indubitably a forgotten, marginal people: forgotten by most Australians, and marginalised by racism in Queensland. Since then there has been some improvement, but not much (Moore and Mercer 1993: 208-42).

A similar technique was used by Ongka in recording his "self­ account" (Strathern 1979: x). Noel Fatnowna and His Book 149

REFERENCES

BANDLER, Faith, 1977. Wacvie. Adelaide: Rigby. BANDLER, Faith, 1984. Welau My Brother. Sydney: Wild and Woolley. BANDLER, Faith, and Len FOX, 1980. Marani in Australia. Adelaide: Rigby. BURT, Ben, 1994. Review of Roger M. Keesing, Custom and Confrontation: the Kwaio struggle for cultural autonomy, in Man, 29(1): 240-41. CORRIS, Peter, 1972. "White Australia' in Action: the repatriation of Pacific Islanders from Queensland", Historical Studies, 15(58): 237-50. . EDMONDSON, Caroline, 1984. "The Diaries of S.M. Smith, Government Agent: a new light on the Pacific Islands labour trade", in Brian Dalton (ed.), Lectures on North Queensland History No.4. Townsville: James Cook University. EDMUND, Ma bel, 1992. No Regrets. Brisbane: Uni versi ty of Queensland Press. FA TNOWN A, Noel, 1989. Fragments of a Lost Heritage, edited by Roger M. Keesing. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. FIFI'I, Jonathan, 1989. From Pig Theft to Parliament: my life between two worlds, edited by Roger M. Keesing. Honiara/Suva: Solomon Islands College of Higher Education, and the Institute ofPaci fic Studies of the University of the South Pacific. KEESING, Roger M., 1978. 'Elota's Story: the life and times of a Solomon Islands big man. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. KEESING, Roger M., 1992. "The Past in the Present: contested representations of culture and history", in Michael Goldsmith and Keith Barber (eds), Other Sites: social anthropology and the politics of interpretation (Palmers ton North: Massey U ni versi ty). KEESING, Roger M. and Peter CORRIS, 1980. Lightning Meets the West Wind: theMalaita massacre. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. MacARTHUR, Stewart, 1990. "Savage History of Canefield Slaves", Weekend Australian, 6-7 January: 6. MENZIES, Colin, 1992a. A Profile of Neglect: a background paper on the situation of Australian South Sea Islanders, Sydney: The Public Practice Pty Ltd. MENZIES, Colin, 1992b. The Call for Recognition: a report on the situation of the Australian South Sea Islanders, Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. MIN1Z,Sidney,1989. "The Sensation of Moving, While Standing Still", American Ethnologist, 16(4): 786-96. 150 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

MooRE,Clive(ed.), 1979. The Forgotten People: a history of the Australian South Sea Island community. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Service. MOORE, Cli ve, 1985. Kanaka: the history of Melanesian Mackay. Boroko / Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and the University of Papua New Guinea Press. MOORE, Clive, 1992. "Revising the Revisionists: the historiography of immigrant Melanesians in Australia", Pacific Studies, 15(2): 61- 86. MOORE, Clive and Trish MERCER, 1993. liThe Forgotten Immigrants: Australia's South Sea Islanders, 1906-1993", in Henry Reynolds (ed.), Race Relations in North Queensland, 2nd ed. Townsville: James Cook University. MUNRO, Doug, 1995a. "The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: an historiographic essay", Journal of Social History, 28(3): 609-27. MUNRO, Doug, 1995b. "Pacific Islands History in the Vernacular: . practical and ethical considerations", New Zealand Journal of History, 29(1): 83-96. SHLOMOWITZ, Ralph, 1987. "Mortality and the Pacific Labour Trade", Journal of Pacific History, 22(1): 34-55. SHLOMOWITZ, Ralph, 1989. "Epidemiology and the Pacific Labor Trade", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 19(4): 585-610. STRATHERN, Andrew (translator), 1979. Ongka:a self-account bya New Guinea big man. London: Duckworth.