Macassan contact with Australia
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A Macassan wooden sailing vessel or prau. |
Macassan traders from the southwest corner of
Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) visited the coast of northern Australia for hundreds of years to fish for
trepang (also known as
sea cucumber or sandfish), a marine slug prized for its culinary and medicinal values in
Chinese markets. These visits have left their mark on the people of Northern
Australia — in language, art, ecomony and even genetics in the descendants of both Macassan and Australian ancestors that are now found on both sides of the
Arafura and
Banda Seas.
Historians are unsure as to when the journeys began from Ujungpandang (
Makassar) to the place the Macassans called
Marege â€" the north coast of Australia. Trepang trade from Makassar appears to have began around 1720, though some writers suggest the voyages began 300 years earlier. The extent of their journeys ranged thousands of kilometers, from
the Kimberleys in the west to
Mornington Island in the east of the
Gulf of Carpentaria.
The trade began to dwindle toward the end of the
19th century due to the imposition of customs duties and license fees by Australian governments that made it unviable, and after the introduction of legislation to protect Australia's "territorial integrity", the last Macassan
prau left
Arnhem Land in
1906. Demand for trepang may have also dropped off due to
unrest in China at the time.
Matthew Flinders in his circumnavigation of Australia in
1803 met the Macassan trading fleet near present day
Nhulunbuy, an encounter that led to the establishment of settlements on
Melville Island and the
Coburg Peninsula.
Trepang lie motionless on the sea floor, and are exposed at low tide. Fishing was done by hand, spearing, diving or dredging. The catch was placed in boiling water before being dried and smoked, to preserve the trepang for the long journey back to Makassar and other South East Asian markets, to eventually end up in China. Trepang is valued for its jelly-like texture, its flavour-enhancing properties, and as a stimulant and aphrodisiac.
Remains of some of these processing plants from the 18th and 19th centuries can still be found at
Port Essington,
Anuru Bay and
Groote Eylandt, along with stands of
tamarind trees.
While markedly different from their experience of colonisation by the
British, the Macassan contact with
Aboriginal people had a significant impact on their cultures. The visits are remembered vividly today, through
oral history, songs and dances, and rock and bark paintings, as well as the cultural legacy of transformations that resulted from the contact.
The Macassans exchanged goods such as cloth, tobacco, knives, rice and alcohol for the right to fish in Aboriginal waters, and to employ Aboriginal labor. Such products brought with them new opportunities as well as new challenges, such as the dangerous combination of knives and alcohol.
Some
Yolngu communities of Arnhem land re-figured their economies from being largely land-based to largely sea-based with the introduction of Macassan technologies such as dug-out canoes. These seaworthy boats, unlike their traditional bark canoes, allowed Yolngu to fish the ocean for
dugongs and
turtles.
Some Aboriginal workers willingly accompanied the Macassans back to their homeland across the Arafura Sea. The
Yolngu people also remember with grief the abductions and trading of Yolngu women, and the introduction of smallpox, which was epidemic in the islands east of Java at the time.
A Macassan
pidgin became a
lingua franca along the north coast, not just between Macassans and Aboriginal people, but also between different Aboriginal groups, who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Macassan culture. Words from the Macassan language can still be found in many contemporary Aboriginal languages of the north coast. A widespread example is the word
Balanda meaning 'white person' (which originally came to the Macassan language from the Dutch, "Hollander"). Some of the goods traded by the Macassans spread far across the country, even to the south.
Though prevented from fishing across Arnhem Land, other
Indonesian fishermen have continued to fish up and down the west coast, in what are now Australian waters, as they have done for hundreds of years before such territories were declared — some in traditional boats that their grandparents owned. Such fishing is considered illegal by the present-day Australian government, and since the
1970s, if caught by authorities, the boats are burned and the fishermen are returned to Indonesia. Most Indonesian fishing in Australian waters now occurs around
Ashmore Reef and the nearby islands.
*
History of Australia before 1901*
Yolngu MacKnight, CC (1976).
The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia. Melbourne University Press.
McIntosh, IS (2000) Aboriginal Reconciliation and the Dreaming. Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
