STEVE MULLINS

The images below, taken between 1911 and 1913, are a small sample of photographs collected during research into the activities of Australian pearl-shellers in Propinsi Maluku, eastern Indonesia, from the 1870s to the Pacific War.

Australian pearl-shellers initially were drawn to the ‘Malay Archipelago’ by the prospect of inexpensive, capable and tractable labour, but later went in search of new pearl-shelling grounds, or more commonly for old grounds to which new deep-diving technologies could be applied. One of the richest 'old grounds' was off the east coast of the Aru Islands, and the 'centre of gravity' of this project has been to investigate the relocation of a large part of the Torres Strait pearl-shelling fleet to Aru in 1905.

An Australian consortium, registered in Batavia as the Celebes Trading Co. (CTC), purchased from the Dutch the exclusive right to work the Aru grounds, and it stationed seven schooners and 130 pearl-shelling luggers, employing more than 1000 men, at the small Aru port of Dobo. The project traces the Australian influence in this remote corner of the Netherlands East Indies, at a time when its social identity was malleable, and political authority ambiguous, to say the least.

Dr Steve Mullins
October 2001

The photographs remain the property of Helen Darlington, and should not be reproduced without permission. The map is from, Leonard Y. Andaya, The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Modern Period, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1993. It remains the property of Leonard Andaya, and should not be reproduced.

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