The Queensland Government has records of 62,475 indenture contacts between Pacific Islanders and employers between 1863 and 1904. There were also some Pacific Islanders recruited via Sydney and into the Torres Strait onwards from 1860. Given the number of re-enlistments, the total number of individuals is likely to be around 50,000.

‘Slavery’ is a slippery but emotive word that means different things to different people. About 12.5 million Africans were imported to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries through the slave trade.

Australian South Sea Islanders usually see themselves as a distinct Australian ethnic group, the descendants of around 50,000 Pacific Islanders on 62,000 indentured labour contracts first brought to New South Wales in 1847 (122), but mainly to Queensland between 1860 and 1904.

Vanuatu Labour Recruits to Queensland and Fiji, 1863-1911

Benjamin Boyd (1801-1851) was a rich entrepreneur and adventurer who arrived in New South Wales in 1842 and proceeded to buy up 381.000 acres of pastoral land in New South Wales.

62,475 indenture contracts were issued for Pacific Islanders to work as labourers in Queensland between 1863 and 1904. Given the rate of re-enlistments from the islands it seems likely that there were about 50,000 individuals. The vast majority (95 per cent) were healthy adolescent and young adult males.

There were 870 labour-recruiting voyagers between Queensland and the Pacific Islands, 1863-1904. Illegal activity and abuses occurred on many of these voyagers.

In creating general work pictures about the lives of South Sea Islanders over the last 150 years it is easy to lose sight of the individuals involved and the atrocities which occurred. While most of these incidents come from the 1860s and 1870s, the level of physical abuse was a disgrace to Queensland. It is undeniable that coercion and cruelty towards Islanders was very prevalent before about 1890.

When the Islander recruits landed in Queensland they had to deal with Police Magistrates, Inspectors of Pacific Islanders, and Government Medical Officers. These men were responsible for supervising the arrival of the recruits, ensuring they had entered contracts voluntarily, were of a legal age, and were healthy enough to work for three years. If there were doubts on any grounds, recruits could be returned to their islands on the next available vessel. Although the process depended on the judgement and honesty of the officials, misunderstandings could be negotiated. The Magistrates and Inspectors controlled payment of wages, first annually, then six-monthly from the 1880s, and all deposits and withdrawals from the Islanders’ bank accounts.

Beginning in the early 1870s, Solomon Islanders took part in the labour trade to and from Queensland, Australia and Fiji, and smaller numbers worked in Samoa and New Caledonia. The largest numbers went to Queensland. Labourers were employed mainly on plantations and farms. Usually this was to process sugarcane, although some also worked in maritime industries, sheep and cattle industries and even in domestic service. Overwhelmingly the labourers were men in their late teens into their mid-thirties; only about 5 per cent were women.

62,475 indenture contracts were issued for Pacific Islanders to work as labourers in Queensland between 1863 and 1904. They travelled to Queensland on 807 voyages involving 80 islands in what is generally known as the Queensland labour trade to Melanesia. Given the rate of re-enlistments from the islands it seems likely that there were about 50,000 individuals involved. The vast majority (95 per cent) were adolescent and young adult males. In 1901 the Commonwealth government ordered the deportation of all Islanders in Australia: of the 10,000 resident in 1901, only around 1,500 remained in 1907, from whom the present-day Australian South Sea Islander community is descended.

Today, many Pacific Islanders are fervent practicing Christians. They first encountered Christianity four hundred years ago through forced baptism imposed by Catholic Spanish explorers like Luigi Baéz de Torres who kidnapped young southern New Guineans and took them away with him on his ships in 1606, never to return. However, the real spread of the faith dates back to the Spanish Catholics in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam beginning in 1668, with Protestant Christianity following from 1796 when the Interdenominational British Missionary Society, later known as the London Missionary Society (LMS) entered Tahiti.

62,475 Pacific Islander indentured labourers were contracted to work in Queensland onwards from 1863. In 1901, approximately 10,000 Pacific Islanders lived in eastern Australia from Torres Strait to northern New South Wales. They comprised the original labourers and their children. In 1900s they were two-thirds from the Solomon Islands and one-third from the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu).

After the 1901-1908 Deportation years around 2,000 to 2,500 South Sea Islanders remained in Australia, living mainly along the coast of Queensland and Northern New South Wales. With no regeneration from immigration, the Australian Government expected them to disappear as the original generation died and their children were absorbed into the Indigenous population.

Between 1974 and 1980, while tutors and later PhD students at James Cook University and the Australian National University, Clive Moore and Patricia Mercer recorded 87 cassette tapes with 75 Australian South Sea Islanders at Mackay, Bowen, Ayr and Home Hill, Palm Island, Ingham and Hervey Bay. Some were interviewed several times. There are supplemented by a further 9 tapes recorded at Mackay, Rockhampton, Tweed Heads, Hervey Bay, Maryborough and Ayr and Home Hill by Matt Peacock from the ABC for a three-part radio programme The Forgotten People in 1978. tapes are supplemented by a few others with Europeans associated with the Islanders. They were held as part of the Black Oral History Collection at James Cook University and in the 1990s were converted to CDs for preservation.

This list contains over 160 surnames and is not complete. The list largely excludes Australian South Sea Islander families in Torres Strait (due to lack of research). Some variations in spelling of names has been included, so the actual number would be less

The New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) supplied nearly 40,000 and Solomon Islands 18,000 just over one-quarter) of the original Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) population between 1863 and 1904. The New Hebrides dominated early recruiting, then in the 1880s the number from the Solomons expanded, providing over half of the recruits in the final years of the labour trade.

The northern New South Wales Australian South Sea Islander population is largely but not entirely descended from Islanders brought into Queensland on three-year contracts as indentured labourers.

After the callamatous deportation years of the 1900s, which left Australian South Islanders separated from their home islands, since the 1960s they have reconnected with their kin in their islands or origin. Movement between the Australian Islander communities and their nations of origin is constant, and the participation of Pacific Islanders in the Guest Worker Scheme is now drawing niVanautu and Solomon Islanders to Australia as seasonal workers. Australian Pacific Islanders need to understand their home nations and the way their governemnt and customary processes are structured.

1790s: Once New South Wales was established, so too was a food trade in salted pork to Tahiti. Pacific or South Sea Islanders began to arrive in Australia, to Sydney and Hobart, as boats’ crews.