Cultural Heritage Series

VOLUME 4 PART 2 MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM CULTURAL HERITAGE SERIES 17 OCTOBER 2008 © The State of Queensland (Queensland Museum) 2008 PO Box 3300, South Brisbane 4101, Australia Phone 06 7 3840 7555 Fax 06 7 3846 1226 Email [email protected] Website www.qm.qld.gov.au National Library of Australia card number ISSN 1440-4788 NOTE Papers published in this volume and in all previous volumes of the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum may be reproduced for scientific research, individual study or other educational purposes. Properly acknowledged quotations may be made but queries regarding the republication of any papers should be addressed to the Editor in Chief. Copies of the journal can be purchased from the Queensland Museum Shop. A Guide to Authors is displayed at the Queensland Museum web site A Queensland Government Project Typeset at the Queensland Museum CHAPTER 4 HISTORICAL MUA ANNA SHNUKAL Shnukal, A. 2008 10 17: Historical Mua. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 4(2): 61-205. Brisbane. ISSN 1440-4788. As a consequence of their different origins, populations, legal status, administrations and rates of growth, the post-contact western and eastern Muan communities followed different historical trajectories. This chapter traces the history of Mua, linking events with the family connections which always existed but were down-played until the second half of the 20th century. There are four sections, each relating to a different period of Mua’s history. Each is historically contextualised and contains discussions on economy, administration, infrastructure, health, religion, education and population. Totalai, Dabu, Poid, Kubin, St Paul’s community, Port Lihou, church missions, Pacific Islanders, education, health, Torres Strait history, Mua (Banks Island). Anna Shnukal, 75 Stanley Terrace, Taringa, Qld 4068, Australia; received 24 July 2006. This chapter attempts to recover aspects of the from World War II, wolfram mining and the post-contact history of Mua set against a broader post-war Christian co-operative movement, historical context. It attempts to answer questions as well as legislative changes, have elided the put to me by the residents of each community differences between the two communities to such about the internal history of the western villages an extent that younger residents are largely (Totalai, Dabu, Adam, Poid and Kubin) and the unaware of them: as far as they are concerned, origins and development of eastern St Paul’s, both communities have always been typical Torres particularly the growth of social and cultural Strait communities. interconnections between western and eastern Mua. The structure of this chapter is dictated by these concerns and themes: Section 1 deals with colonial Despite their present-day similarities, eastern Mua; Section 2 with pre-war western and eastern and western Mua were once perceived to be quite Mua; Section 3 with war-time Mua; and Section different and distant communities. They differed 4 with post-war Mua. Each section is historically in their founding circumstances, the ethnic contextualised and contains essays on the economy, origins of their inhabitants, their administrations, administration, infrastructure, health, religion, legal status, relations with surrounding islands, education and population, categories which and degree of outside support and interference; are not discrete but overlap and cross-cut each consequently, they followed different historical other. The amount of documentation available trajectories. As we shall see, the main pre-war has dictated the length of the sections except for differences between Poid and St Paul’s lay in the Section 4, which is the briefest – there are many pace of development, the provision of services people still alive who can better inform the and the amount of control by and contact with present generation about their post-war history Europeans. St Paul’s as one of only three Church than I can through the written record. of England missions in Torres Strait (and its major Australian mission for Pacific Islanders), Non-Islanders may object that too much attention was especially favoured by both church and is paid to details of the yabugud (social connec- State. From the outset it was showcased to tions) between Mua and elsewhere but Torres visiting dignitaries as a model island community, Strait events cannot be fully understood without as evidenced by the number and frequency of such knowledge (see Shnukal, 2000). Despite official visits. To outsiders, on the other hand, Poid the island’s comparatively large size, its western was considered a backwater for most of its pre- settlements have received little ethnographic or war history, largely ignored by government and bureaucratic attention; by contrast, the founding rarely visited by officials other than priests and and early years of eastern St Paul’s community Protectors. Nonetheless, kinship bonds between have been extensively, even excessively, docu- the two halves of Mua, shared experiences arising mented. Sources consulted for this chapter 62 MEMOIRS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM include London Missionary Society reports, retrieved about the contact of the white men and journals and correspondence; correspondence and their South Sea crews with the natives it would reports from the Queensland Colonial Secretary’s make most interesting and doubtless unsavory Office and relevant Queensland Departments;1 reading.’ vital registration data from the Somerset registers of births, deaths and marriages (unreliable for In 1872 Governor Normanby visited Mua Pass Islanders until 1927); Church of England registers – the narrow channel between Mua and Badu and priests’ diaries; Australian Board of Missions – and reported negatively on the treatment and conditions of the 300 to 400 Pacific Islanders (ABM) journals and Diocese of Carpentaria year employed there. On his recommendation, the books;2 inquest evidence; and published works 3 islands lying within 60 miles (96km) of the dealing in full or in part with Mua. Gaps in the mainland were officially annexed to the colony documentary record are supplemented where of Queensland by Letters Patent of 30 May possible by family stories and reminiscences from 1872. Some trepangers and pearlers moved the author’s linguistic field notebooks 1981-2006. to more distant islands and these too were COLONIAL MUA annexed in 1879, making the Islanders British colonial subjects and their islands crown lands. Islanders living near Thursday Island, including HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Following the the people of Mua and their Kaurareg kinfolk, long sea voyages of the 17th to 19th centuries, became increasingly drawn into the colonial when European explorers and surveyors mapped British economic and political orbit. Introduced and (re)named vast areas of the Pacific, it was diseases like smallpox, measles, tuberculosis only a matter of time before some European and pneumonia may have halved the population power would find and formally annexe the islands to about 1700 by the end of the 1870s (Beckett, of Torres Strait. The first recorded passage through 1987; Mullins, 1992). By the 1880s the common the strait was in 1606 by the Spaniard Luis Vaez consensus was that they were under threat of de Torres, followed by the Englishmen William extinction (Verjus, 1888: 268).4 Bligh in 1789 and 1792 and William Bampton and Matthew Alt in 1793, and the Frenchman Dumont Hon. John Douglas, a former Queensland D’Urville in 1840. It became increasingly clear premier, was appointed government resident that colonial interests would eventually seek to in 1885. Impressed by the productivity of the incorporate Torres Strait into the British Empire, Islanders, their general demeanor and their thereby opening it up for trade and settlement. receptivity to European material goods and ideas, British Navy ships began to survey the strait in he argued forcefully against including Islanders 1802, facilitating the use by trading and passenger in the Queensland Aboriginals Protection and ships of the newly-charted channels seeking a Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. In swifter route to Asian and British ports. Despite its time, its original aim of protecting Aboriginal reputation as a passage ‘under the most favourable people from abuses was distorted and it became circumstances, beset with intricacy and danger’ primarily a means for the government to control (Wilson, 1835: 5), Torres Strait became the the Indigenous people and profit from their preferred route between eastern Australia and labour. Douglas had by then instituted a system of ports northwest. Indigenous self-government, unique in Australia, which replaced the previous system of ‘mamooses’ The first European settlement in the region (island leaders) with island Councils, police and was established at Albany Island, just off Cape courts. Torres Strait Islanders were henceforth York in 1862, removing to mainland Somerset officially responsible for conducting community the following year, and to Port Kennedy on Waiben affairs and empowered to deal with minor crimes (Thursday Island) in 1877. During the mid-1860s through imprisonment or fines (Parry-Okeden, bêche-de-merers (trepangers) travelled westwards 1897: 12).5 from the Pacific to establish trepang stations on various islands and in 1870 commercial FIRST SIGHTINGS OF MUA. The earliest known quantities of pearl shell were gathered on Tudu historical reference to Mua is dated 11 September (Warrior Island). The pearl rush attracted men 1792, when Captain William Bligh of H.M.S. from all parts of the world and had profound Bounty saw in the distance ‘a mountainous island’ consequences for the number and composition and gave it the name ‘Banks’ in honour of Joseph of the population. Haddon (1935: xiii) notes Banks, naturalist on James Cook’s 1770 voyage. dryly of those early years: ‘If anything can be That action of bestowing a European name GELAM’S HOMELAND 63 (of which the Mua Islanders were unaware) considerable attention to the cultivation of yams, signified its ‘discovery’ and incorporation into bananas, etc.’ (Jardine, 1865). the body of Western knowledge. Although there were no immediate repercussions for the CYCLES OF WAR.

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