In 1847, a group of Pacific islanders were spotted on the road heading towards the city of Port Phillip (modern-day Melbourne). The ten men were hauling two drays laden with wool bales from the colony of New South Wales, ending up in Sydney Road, Brunswick.
The movement of these Pacific workers was reported to the Assistant Protector of Aborigines in an October 1847 letter, expressing concern that “a party of blacks were on their way to Melbourne on the line of the new Sydney Road. Early this morning I was out and to my astonishment found that they were not Aborigines of Australia but from the South Sea Islands imported by Mr Boyde. By noon they will be in town, there were ten of them with 2 Wool Drays from a Mr Wheatly station by what I could learn from Mr Murry, they were destitute of weapons.”
The epic journey of Ben Boyd’s indentured labourers has inspired “Sydney Road Blaks”, a collaborative art exhibition at the Counihan Gallery in inner-city Brunswick. Blending history, humour and creativity, last month’s exhibition was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and curated by Kim Kruger, her daughter Savanna Kruger and PNG-born artist and researcher Lisa Hilli.
“Sydney Road Blaks” featured a range of photos, digital prints, acrylic paintings, sculpture and art installations by Aboriginal and Islander artists, including Paola Balla, Daniel Boyd, Destiny Deacon, Kim Kruger, Savanna Kruger, Mandy Nicholson, Sofii Belling-Harding and Stacie Piper.
Co-curator Kim Kruger told Islands Business that “the artists’ response to the men’s story produces a rich dialogue between indigenous peoples. Collectively the works in ‘Sydney Road Blaks’ contemplate the country the men traversed, who they were, the ways in which they were treated and how this reflects Aboriginal and South Sea Islander experiences today.”
Sydney Road Blaks
From colonial times, Sydney Road has run through Brunswick towards the heart of the Victorian capital of Melbourne. Today, as its old industrial factories and brickworks are transformed into modern apartment blocks, this inner-city suburb retains many colonial-era buildings, bluestone laneways and heritage sites. The Retreat Hotel, established in 1842, is still a popular watering hole on Sydney Road, located close to the municipality’s town hall.
Along with the local library, Brunswick Town Hall hosts the Counihan Gallery, named after noted Australian artist Noel Counihan. For Kim Kruger, it was wonderful to exhibit in a gallery looking out directly onto Sydney Road.
Her series of digital prints “Within ten miles of Melbourne” and “Splitting logs for a feed” feature in the exhibition. They recreate the 1847 voyage, with imagery of Melanesian men pushing a supermarket shopping cart through the streets of modern-day Melbourne, and drinking at the Retreat Hotel, where the 19th Century islanders arrived as a way stop on their trip along Sydney Road.
Memories of blackbirding
In colonial Australia, industries like sugar cane and cotton relied on indentured labour from across Melanesia. Known as “blackbirding,” this colonial labour trade was notorious for the mistreatment of workers known as Kanakas (a Polynesian word for human being).
The ten men on Sydney Road were brought to Australia by Scottish settler Ben Boyd in the mid-1800s, from Lifou in the Loyalty Islands and Tanna in the New Hebrides. By 1847, Boyd had nearly 200 islanders working as labourers and shepherds on sheep-stations near Eden (Monero country), Deniliquin (Wemba Wemba country) and Echuca (Yorta Yorta country).
Blackbirding to Australia expanded at the height of the American Civil War,when the southern Confederacy could not export slave-grown cotton to the United Kingdom between 1861-65. Australian businessmen – flush with capital from the 1850s gold rush – saw an opportunity to expand the cotton and sugar industries in the British colonies of Queensland and New South Wales. Between 1863 and 1904, more than 60,000 Melanesians were brought to work in fields and farms across Queensland and northern New South Wales. Employers relied on islanders recruited – or kidnapped – from the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands, as well as Lifou, Fiji and other sites across Melanesia.
“I find it really strange that people don’t seek out this history,” Kruger explains. “There’s a whole history of people who have benefited from the proceeds of slavery coming onto stolen Aboriginal land and reinventing themselves. At the time of the gold rush, a lot of people came out here and re-invented themselves as merchants.”
After Australian Federation in 1901, most indentured Melanesian labourers were deported under the White Australia Policy, with thousands returning to their home islands between 1904 and 1914. Despite this, more than 2,000 people remained in Australia – mainly around Mackay and other towns in north Queensland – hiding from the authorities and often marrying into indigenous Aboriginal communities. Today, their descendants are known as Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI).
For Kim Kruger, a woman of South Sea Island heritage, the artworks are part of a broader project of memory and understanding. She says the art exhibition is a way of encouraging people to think about the history of their place and the legacies of the colonial labour trade – especially at a time of growing labour mobility between Australia and neighbouring island states: “My research is looking at ways South Sea Islanders can live well on Aboriginal country, so the exhibition is part of that, thinking about it and writing about it.”
Digging into archives
Inspired by the work of historian Tracey Banivanua Mar, Kruger and PNG-born artist Lisa Hilli had long discussed collaborative projects, considering new installations at the Melbourne Museum or a musical to mark the 150th history of blackbirding in 2013. Kruger was also eager to develop an intergenerational project, and “Sydney Road Blaks” was co-curated with her daughter Savanna, drawing on research by her mother, the noted South Sea Islander elder Patricia Corowa.
The project was inspired by Corowa’s discovery in the archives of the 1847 letter about the Sydney Road men.
“I asked my mother to do some research so we could tell the national story of ASSI through music, but that project – ‘Blackbird Sings’ – was never realised,” Kruger said. “However, my mother found this letter and it was really intriguing to us, because of the relationship between Aboriginal people and South Sea Islander people highlighted in a letter.”
Further research in the archives revealed several newspaper reports monitoring the passage of the indentured workers towards Melbourne.
“The reporting about the men was diverse: sometimes they were portrayed as poor innocent little savages, but at other times as menacing cannibals,” Kruger notes. “They were often described as being on the run or having bolted, but the fact that they had two wool drays with them showed to me that they were working.”
These archival records inspired artworks that highlight location, colonial history and the role of Pacific Island labour in building Australia’s economy. As Kruger notes: “My photographs are trying to show that they weren’t just on a walk in the park – they were bringing wool bales down to Melbourne, and it was exhausting labour. The newspaper reports said that they were willing to split logs to receive a feed, which suggests they hadn’t been properly supplied with rations.”
Changing names
The exhibition comes at a time Australians are debating the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a proposal for constitutional change developed at a May 2017 meeting of First Nations’ representatives in central Australia. The Uluru Statement proposes the creation of a First Nations Voice to Parliament, to be enshrined in the Australian constitution, as well as a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of truth-telling and reconciliation, and a Treaty between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Around Australia, local communities are working with indigenous elders to draw out the hidden history of locations, seeking to acknowledge country by changing or updating names that commemorate colonial dispossession.
Earlier this year, the Ben Boyd National Park – located near Eden in southern New South Wales – was renamed as Beowa National Park. The new name means “killer whale” in Thaua language, recognising the Aboriginal cultural heritage of the area rather than the early pioneer of blackbirding. For Kim Kruger, the decision to remove Ben Boyd’s name was also a generous response to the tragic history of the colonial labour trade.
“In New South Wales, the local mob included the history of blackbirding and slavery in their reasons as to why the name should be changed,” she said. “It’s interesting that Aboriginal people have championed the name change because of its connection to slavery, coupled with their own dispossession.”
The same process is underway in Brunswick, a Melbourne suburb located within the local government area of Moreland. The art exhibition coincided with a decision by Moreland City Council to rename the municipality as “Merri-bek”, after elders from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and local Brunswick residents campaigned for a name change. Moreland was originally a slave plantation in Jamaica. In 1839, settler Farquhar McCrae purchased unceded land of the Wurundjeri people in what is now Victoria, and named his property Moreland in honour of his grandfather’s Caribbean slave plantation.
Exhibition co-curator Lisa Hilli has researched the cultural significance of the new name Merri-bek, the Woi Wurrung word for “rocky country”. It symbolises the bluestone that lines the waterways of nearby Moonee Moonee and Merri Creeks and highlights the stonework that is a heritage feature of the area today.
“Today Merri-bek lines the streets and suburbs of greater Melbourne,” Hilli writes. “Merri-bek bluestone was a key resource in building one of Australia’s major capital cities, its surrounding suburbs, including its iconic bluestone laneways. Merri-bek bluestone built the churches that still stand today along Sydney Road and more ominously, Pentridge prison.”
For Kim Kruger, the collaboration of Aboriginal, South Sea Islander and Pacific Island artists in the Sydney Road Blaks exhibition shows the way that diaspora communities can respect the traditional owners of country.
“All through this project, it has been interesting to me to see how generous and accommodating Aboriginal people have been when they hear about the story of South Sea Islanders,” she said. “It’s not just about getting their own name back, it’s about the harms done to other groups of people. That was really shown in the range of artists in the exhibition, the way they engaged and the works they produced. A lot of it is about giving people safe passage and making sure they can return home safely.”
