'A disguised and unquestionable form of slavery: Aboriginal labour on the nineteenth-century pearling fleet in north-west Australia

Thirty-five years after the British took possession of the west coast of Australia in 1829, the colonisation of north-west Australia, 1,700 or so kilometres north of Perth, commenced. In 1863 the colonial government advertised special land regulations and within two years, investors had taken advantage of the generous financial terms to claim holdings, and landed settlers on Ngarluma traditional country at Tien Tsin Harbour (renamed Cossack in 1871), on the mouth of the Harding River (Ngurin). The numbers were at first small, but the process of colonisation, and the dispossession and subjugation of the traditional owners, proceeded rapidly. At Yiramarggadu, 20 kilometres inland from Cossack, Roebourne was gazetted in 1866, and a government resident, Robert John Sholl, became the one-man manifestation of colonial government in north-western Australia. Within a few years pastoral stations were established along the coast, north to the De Grey River and south to the Ashburton region. While the pastoral industry initially struggled, the region's fortunes were rescued by the rich pearling banks along the coast, and a large number of pastoralists bought shares in vessels in the race to make their fortunes - or at least to survive. The labour needs of both industries were great, but the means of obtaining it differed significantly. Pastoralists considered the Aboriginal people on their pastoral leases to be 'wandering retainers' who could be bound by contract and put to work on their stations or pearling boats. But the fleets were labour-hungry, and pearlers were prepared to look widely to obtain labour, often through the agency of 'blackbirders'.