AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS NICHOLAS HALTER PACIFIC SERIES Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760464141 ISBN (online): 9781760464158 WorldCat (print): 1232438742 WorldCat (online): 1232438653 DOI: 10.22459/ATSS.2021 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph reproduced courtesy of the Fiji Museum (Record no. P32.4.157). This edition © 2021 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgements . vii List of Figures . ix Preface . xi Note . xiii Introduction . 1 1 . Fluid Boundaries and Ambiguous Identities . 25 2 . Steamships and Tourists . 61 3 . Polynesian Promises . 109 4 . Degrees of Savagery . 145 5 . In Search of a Profitable Pacific . 187 6 . Conflict, Convicts and the Condominium . 217 7 . Preserving Health and Race in the Tropics . 255 Conclusion . 295 Appendix: An Annotated Bibliography of Australian Travel Writing . .. 307 Bibliography . 347 Acknowledgements This book took life as a doctoral dissertation in Pacific History at The Australian National University under the supervision of Brij Lal, to whom it is dedicated. Brij has been a generous mentor and friend from the beginning. I credit my personal and professional development to Brij’s inspirational example. I would not be where I am today without the love and support of Brij, Padma and his family. This research was made possible with financial support from The Australian National University and the Australian Government. Thank you to my friends and colleagues at the ANU School of Culture, History and Language, who shared their ideas and experiences with me. In addition, I am grateful to a number of scholars who generously gave their time to assist me—thank you Angela Woollacott, Vicki Luker, Max Quanchi, Ryota Nishino, Kirstie Close, Paul D’Arcy and Stewart Firth. The support services provided by the staff of archives and libraries in Australia and the Pacific have been crucial to this research. This includes the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, the Barr Smith Library and the National Archives of Fiji, in whose spaces I spent countless hours. A special thanks also to Kylie Moloney and Ewan Maidment of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau for providing inspiration along the way. I have been fortunate to continue my research while working at the University of the South Pacific for the last five years. I am grateful to the staff and students of the School of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Arts, Law and Education for this precious time. Vinaka vaka levu and fa’afetai tele lava for the memories. vii AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS Thank you to my ever supportive family, my grandparents, Aunty Joyce, Mum, Dad, Emily and Stephen. You have always encouraged me to chart my own path, even if it has taken me far from home. Finally, to my wife Makayla, I owe everything. Thank you for your compassion, patience and unwavering love on this journey. viii List of Figures Figure 1: Routes Map Torres Straits—Tahiti ....................xiv Figure 2: Map of the Pacific Islands ..........................30 Figure 3: New Guinea Native ...............................39 Figure 4: Let’s Explore in New Guinea Wilds Australia’s Mandated Territory ..................................40 Figure 5: Burns, Philp & Company Publication .................72 Figure 6: Rear Cover of a Union Steamship Company Publication ...73 Figure 7: Translate Your Precious Holiday Moments into Pathescope Home Movies .............................74 Figure 8: Australasian United Steam Navigation Co. Travel Guide ...83 Figure 9: Australian Samoans ..............................101 Figure 10: Pearls of the Pacific .............................113 Figure 11: Cruise to the Solomon Islands .....................119 Figure 12: Memories of Moorea ............................127 Figure 13: How a Lady Travels on Ocean Island ................142 Figure 14: The Author, Recruiter, Captain, and Boat’s Crew of Natives. 155 Figure 15: Front Cover of a Book in ‘The Vagabond’ series published by The Australian ...........................156 Figure 16: Old Cannibal Chief of the Island of Aoba, New Hebrides .....................................180 Figure 17: Products of the Pacific Islands .....................189 ix AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS Figure 18: Canaques Are After Them ........................243 Figure 19: On the Quayside, Noumea .......................249 Figure 20: One of the Wards of the Methodist Mission Hospital, Ba, Fiji. 277 x Preface How superb in reality, fragrant in retrospect, for those who love and understand.1 Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, Robert Michael Ballantyne and Louis Becke—as a young man, I had never read these authors’ famous and fantastical tales of adventure and savagery in the Pacific Islands. On the contrary, my Pacific education was based on the American film Castaway (2000) and a Lonely Planet guidebook. Yet, for Australians of the early twentieth century, these writers loomed over the Pacific, overshadowing the accounts of explorers before them and informing and inspiring new generations of Australian-born who were more literate and more mobile than their forebears. As I read the novels and magazines that those Australian children would have consumed, as well as the subsequent travel accounts of Australians who had realised their dreams of a Pacific odyssey, I was captivated by their recollections. I was especially fascinated by the moments of expectations meeting reality, and the subsequent choices that were made to reconcile fact with fiction. My travel experience in the Pacific Islands was profoundly liberating. Eager to leave behind the familiar for an adventure promised by the unknown, I went to Weno Island (in Chuuk Lagoon, in the Federated States of Micronesia) to volunteer at a Catholic high school for 12 months. I relished my isolation and freedom from the outside world. I was energised by my new-found independence. I was only 18 years old and was naive and impressionable, and I remember the joys and frustrations of cross-cultural exchange. It was a formative period in my life and, like 1 Alan John Marshall, The Black Musketeers: The Work and Adventures of a Scientist on a South Sea Island at War and in Peace (London: William Heinemann, 1937), 295. xi AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS Australian zoologist Alan John Marshall, in 1937, I strove to convey to my family and friends the powerful influence of my Pacific encounters and the depth and intensity of the emotions that moved me. Writing was an important process during my travels: the nightly ritual of reflection in my journal, the weekly emails to parents, the monthly letters to grandparents and the periodic updates to my online blog. For me, writing was a simultaneous activity of reflection, communication and chronicling. Each text served a specific purpose—to reassure, to document, to argue, to entertain, to advertise, to question and to project— and each was always written with a certain audience in mind. I struggled to articulate my personal experiences in a way that moved others to empathise and understand. As the years passed, my reminiscences became romanticised and nostalgic. I travelled further afield, beyond the Pacific Islands, to chase those fragrant memories. In doing so, I returned with a desire to search for that same sense of connection in Australia that I had found elsewhere. It is this experience that underscores my passion for the Pacific Islands and writing. xii Note I refer to authors by their published names, with their initials expanded if known. I also refer to islands as they were named at the respective time. The following names listed in Table 1 were used by an Australian shipping company in its 1903 route map (see Figure 1) published in All about Burns, Philp & Company, Limited.1 Table 1: Route Map Names Island (s) Present Name Caroline Islands Federated States of Micronesia Ellice Group Tuvalu Fiji Group Fiji Gambier Group, Marquesas Group, Paumotu or French Polynesia Tuamotu Group or Low Archipelago, Society Group, Tubuai or Austral Group Gilbert or Kingsmill Group, Phoenix Group Kiribati Hawai‘i, Sandwich Islands Hawai‘i Hervey or Cook Group, Manahiki Group Cook Islands Marshall Islands Marshall Islands New Caledonia and Loyalty Group New Caledonia New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago Papua New Guinea New Hebrides Vanuatu Niue or Savage Island Niue Ocean Island Banaba Pleasant Island Nauru Samoa or Navigator Group Samoa and American Samoa Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz Group Solomon Islands Tokelau or Union Group Tokelau Tonga or Friendly Group Tonga Source: Table created by the author, based on information from Burns, Philp & Company, All about Burns, Philp & Company, Limited . 1 Burns, Philp & Company, All about Burns, Philp & Company, Limited (Sydney: John Andrew & Co., 1903). xiii AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLERS IN THE SOUTH SEAS Figure 1: Routes Map Torres Straits—Tahiti. Source: Burns, Philp & Co., All about Burns, Philp & Company, Limited . xiv Introduction The truth is that in the places where ‘every one’ goes, almost no man sees with his own eyes … The celebrated spot … is like a photograph which a countless number of others, all more or less similar, have been superimposed in the well known ‘composite’ style … In the whole blurred, worn-out picture, each man’s personal impression counts for just another touch of shade set upon a shadow that has long been there … It is impossible to admire by the battalion, and yet enjoy to the full that sense of an individuality enlarged by experiences absolutely new, that is the real heart of travel-pleasure.1 Beatrice Grimshaw is known as one of Australia’s most famous travel writers of the early twentieth century. Beginning as a sports journalist in Dublin in 1891, Grimshaw then found success as a prolific travel writer of the Pacific Islands.