Pearl shell industry

Due to its dangerous and skilled nature this industry’s reliance on non-white labour led to it being a major exception in the White Australia policy. Chinese people were one of the many diverse ethnic groups this industry was built on.

Essay

“The exception given to the pearling industry was also objected to for fear that such a loophole would soon be expanded by say a ‘powerful mining syndicate’.” p.46

"For a person engaged in the pearling trade, however, no education test was to be applied if they are ‘really and truly part of the crew’." p.103

"The other exception was the pearl shell industry, located mainly at Thursday Island off Queensland, Broome in Western Australia, and Darwin in the North- ern territory, all of which allowed contract workers from Japan and a number of other Asian locations. An immediate concern of the new Commonwealth had been how to deal with those working in the pearling industry before theImmigration Restriction Act was passed. An opinion of the Attorney-General was that they needed to be considered as domiciles and so were exempt from the Dictation Test. This led to all future arrivals of pearl shell industry work- ers being carefully monitored and their return on the expiry of their contracts strictly enforced." p,121.

"The main base for pearling in Australia was Broome, though both Dar- win and Thursday Island had significant fleets, as did Cossack, also in Western Australia. Pearling, due to the danger of overfishing was a heavily controlled industry and its reliance on contract labour only added to this control. The Darwin based pearling industry was established in the 1880s, beginning with a boat and divers brought in from North Borneo and later added to by pearlers who had already been operating in the Torres Strait using Japanese divers.

Pearling in one form or another had taken place in Western Australia since the 1850s. The exploitation of Aboriginal divers in Western Australia had been restricted and this led to divers there being brought from various places in South-East Asia, and later Chinese and Japanese divers.53 In the 1880s Broome became the base for deep sea diving for pearls and pearl shells, developing rapidly until by 1910 over 350 luggers operated out of Broome to supply 75% of the world’s pearl shell output. It was around the time the industry was at its most successful and in an effort to lessen the industries reliance on contracted non- white workers that a batch of imported white divers (numbering seven) arrived at Broome to be placed on the luggers. However they were not a success.

Unable to substitute white divers, the movement of divers and other non- white workers needed to be recorded and regulated." pp.123-124

"As the use of pearl shell for buttons faded, the pearls themselves became the focus with cultured pearls, first estab- lished in Broome in 1956, gradually replacing diving for pearls." p.125

"The Pearling industry scattered across northern Australia provided the larg- est general exception to the Dictation Test’s fencing of the White Australia project, primarily on the basis of inability to find ‘white’ workers willing to do such arduous and dangerous (and low paid) work." p.165

Australia’s Dictation Test - The test it was a crime to fail (Brill, 2021)