Foreword By Geoffrey Blainey

South Sea Islanders in Queensland is one of the most controversial topics studied by Australian historians. It is entangled with the sister topic of racism. It is complicated because it involves labourers shipped to Australia, in the course of half a century, from some 80 different Pacific Islands. Here also is a vital strand in our nation’s political history, for it led to one of the few secession campaigns: the hope in the 1880s that coastal north Queensland would break away from Brisbane and form a seventh colony or state.

Almost everywhere in the world in the 19th century, sugar cane was a stronghold of coloured labour: the belief was universal that white men could not perform outdoors manual work in a very hot climate. As more and more sugar was produced in Australia, the heart of the sugar industry moved to the tropical coast of Queensland. To find the necessary labourers, ships visited an array of South West Pacific islands including New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomons. The recruiting was often brutal but often peaceful. If you read about this traffic and trade in such easily-found sources as Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, and then turn to Paul Dillon’s latest book, you will sometimes wonder whether you are reading about the same episode in history.

Dillon often sets out long documents which give readers an opportunity to learn more and more, and even to make up their mind. Thus, he challenges the prevailing view that these islanders were usually shipped home like sheep without any worthwhile gain. And yet here, without much comment, is a brief aside on a return voyage from Queensland in the ship Spunkie. Scores of the islanders had crammed into the ship’s hold a small mountain of luggage “some of them having as many as three and four large boxes of clothes, besides loose articles of furniture and cooking utensils. The boxes, in addition to clothes and drapery of all descriptions, contained carpenters’ tools, such as adzes, tomahawks, chisels, gimblets, hand-saws, butchers’ knives; rifles, double-barrelled guns, ammunition.”

Since 2018, as a fulltime researcher living on the Sunshine Coast, Dillon has written book after book. At present there is probably no researcher in an Australian university who can equal his knowledge on this vital set of topics. One reason for his success is that he has not only resurrected a collection of key witnesses – islanders themselves, sugar-cane growers, missionaries, sea captains, British naval officers, and politicians – but also cross-examined them with a barrister’s skill. Book available from sales@connorcourt.com