Pearling in Western Australia
Coastal dwelling Aboriginal people had collected and traded pearl shell as well as trepang and tortoise with fisherman from Sulawesi for possibly hundreds of years.
[clarification needed] The farming of cultured pearls remains an important part of the Kimberley economy, worth A$67 million in 2014 and is the second largest fisheries industry in Western Australia after rock lobster.
[citation needed] During the late 1860s many more boats left Fremantle and the pearling industry at Torres Strait, Queensland for the new fishery at Nickol Bay with its port of Tien Tsin Harbour (later known as Cossack).
[citation needed] In the meantime, 'naked diving' continued with most producing exceptional results, especially at the Flying Foam Passage where they used the tides to allow themselves to travel over great distances.
[11] The majority of the workers were Japanese and Malaysian, but also included were Chinese, Filipino, Amborese, Koepanger (Timorese) and Makassan, as well as Aboriginal Australians and people from Europe.
[citation needed] In 1910, two schooners from Koepang were reported to be at work harvesting beche-de-mer near the Walcott Inlet, within Collier Bay, after a "phantom ship" had been spotted off Cape Farquhar some days before.
Four tropical cyclones hit the area between 1908 and 1935 and over 100 boats and 300 people were lost during that time, as evidenced by the numerous graves in the Japanese cemetery in Broome.
[citation needed] At the time of the World War I the price of mother-of-pearl plummeted with the invention and expanded use of plastics for buttons and other articles which had previously been made of shell.
Sumatran-born Samsudin bin Katib was a pearl diver who was recruited and deployed in the Z Special Unit Commandos in the Australian Army and worked behind enemy lines.
Returning to work in Broome, Samsudin protested at a 10% cut in wages and poor conditions for the migrant labourers, organising a general strike.
[14] In April 2019, the skeletons of 14 Yawuru and Karajarri people which had been sold in 1894 by a wealthy Broome pastoralist and pearler to a museum in Dresden, Germany, were brought home.
The remains, which had been stored in the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, showed signs of head wounds and malnutrition, a reflection of the poor conditions endured by Aboriginal people forced to work on the pearl luggers.
Around Broome, the boats had to cope with the extreme tidal range and the shallow sandy shore, on which they had to spend extended periods lying on their sides.
[citation needed] The industry today includes 19 of Australia's 20 cultured pearl farms and generates annual exports of A$200 million and employs approximately 1000 people.
