Maritime Melting Pot - Indian Ocean Cultures

The First Nations in Australia were established by the ancestors of the Aboriginal people, who arrived here not by chance, but as explorers looking for new worlds. Trading was taking place between the coastal people and ‘Makassarmen’ decades prior to British settlement. Seafarers would travel from Asia, work for the season, then head home before the Monsoon. The big resource industries of the 1700s and 1800s were all maritime – whaling, pearling and trepang fishing. Archaeologists have found a network of hearths on the north coast, still visible on the beach, where trepang were hauled in and cooked in iron pots, over 200 years ago.

In an ABC Radio National documentary, Wunambal woman, Dorothy Djanghara, said she remembered older family members discussing the foreign visitors, and even speaking Indonesian. "In the old days, some of our people used to talk the Indonesian way. They kept their own language, but the Indonesians also taught them their way. The blackfellas used to build their rafts out of driftwood and paperbark, but when they met the Indonesians, they traded for canoes. Sometimes they'd trade for young girls. They'd take the girls out to Indonesia, and they wouldn't come back." Young Aboriginal men were known to have joined the crews of traders working along the coast and travelled to and from the islands of Indonesia, taking up the role of seafarers.

These painted figures called wuramu show individuals that Aboriginal people from northern Australia met when travelling to Makassar in South Suluwesi, Indonesia. 
Credit: RM & CH Berndt Collection, Berndt Museum, The University of Western Australia