Plantation Voices: Contemporary conversations with Australian South Sea Islanders

For 40 years South Sea Islanders continued to work contracts on plantations along the Queensland coastline. Some travelled back and forth from their home islands depending on when their contracts expired and if they negotiated new indentured work contracts. They worked and lived in the landscape, creating families and small communities. In later years, Islanders would grow and work their own cane.

However, after four decades of service to Queensland, South Sea Islander labour was called into question. In 1901 the new Commonwealth Government implemented the controversial ‘White Australia policy’ and established the Pacific Islander Labourers Act 1901 (Cth) ordering the repatriation of South Sea Islanders to their home islands. This would become the largest legislated mass deportation in Australian history. Deportation began in earnest in late 1906 and lasted until 1908.

Life was difficult for South Sea Islanders and their descendants who stayed in Queensland. Their lives were repressed in a time of heightened discrimination and exploitation. Islanders were prohibited from working in the sugar industry which had been their lifeblood, and which they helped to create.

There are, however, many stories of kindness to South Sea Islanders during this time. Despite the risk of the financial and criminal penalties they could receive, some farmers continued to secretly use Islander labour.

From 1910 to the 1970s South Sea Islanders were no longer the focus of political conversation and almost became invisible in the landscape. Throughout Queensland, South Sea Islanders moved to the fringe of many coastal townships to create small communities in isolated areas. It was during this time that Australian-born South Sea Islander children began to shape their new identity in Queensland,  living a shared experience with the wider community in these ‘Missing Years’.

Australian South Sea Islander communities along the eastern coastline of Queensland and northern New South Wales continue to work hard to reclaim their history and culture. The landmarks and sites of cultural significance have been mapped and written about by various communities in an attempt to record, document and share Australian South Sea Islander history and heritage with the wider community - creating more of a presence in the physical landscape. The South Sea Islander Community needed their history and contributions to be acknowledged by the wider community.

On the 25 August 1994, the Commonwealth Government officially recognised Australian South Sea Islanders as a unique cultural group with its own history and culture. The government of the day acknowledged the injustices of the indentured labour system and the discrimination suffered by South Sea Islanders and their descendants. South Sea Islanders were finally being recognised for their contributions to the history and economy of Australia.

Australian South Sea Islanders’ resilience to overcome adversity is evident in the strength, determination and humility of the people and the community in its entirety. Humour and laughter, characteristics most prevalent in Australian South Sea Islander communities, have provided the necessary antidote to hide pain, sadness and trauma.

With courage and tenacity strength and determination, Australian South Sea Islanders fought for the future of their children, seeking basic rights to education, to contribute to the wider community, and to live a better life. Most importantly they fought for the empowerment and recognition of Australian South Sea Islanders and for acknowledgement of their experiences and stories to be woven into the broader Australian history.

Plantation Voices presents four Australian South Sea Islander artists who have shared their experiences to open new dialogues about their community’s history, heritage, culture and identity.

Take a moment to experience their creative expressions, listen to their ancestors, acknowledge their voice, their existence, and share their story.

I sourced two images: one of my great great-grandmother Fanny Togo, who was taken from Santo Island of Vanuatu and brought to Tweed Heads and one South Sea Islander man from Mackay. One image is from my family collection, while the other was sourced from the State Library of Queensland collection. What became particularly interesting to me as I gazed at these images were the connections I made as I stared into their eyes.

Dylan Mooney is an Australian South Sea Islander man from the island of Mailata in the Solomon Islands. His mother’s family were taken and brought to Mackay. His father’s side is from the islands of Santo and Ambae, where his grandfather’s grandparents were taken and brought to Tweed Heads.

By employing 19th century wet plate collodion (ambrotype) photography, Jasmine interrogates colonial history, complicating the past. As an Australian South Sea Islander, she is persistently mediating between past, present and future. The artist questions notions of power and appropriation through the method of re-photographing the photograph, confronting the colonial gaze and enacting complicated scenarios of desire, identification, and loss. She uses a process of   projections, digital photography and wet plate photography to insert herself and her daughter into the archive, lifting the image from the historical to communicate the contemporary.

LaVonne Bobongie captures life that is surrounded, engulfed and led by music. Focusing primarily on telling stories through photography of those whose lives are on the road, in the studio and out of a suitcase.

With a heart for social justice especially in her home country of Australia, through her photography LaVonne hopes to tell the stories and bring light to the people forgotten, stolen and misplaced.