Islander community takes aim at statue
THE statue of an alleged slave trader in the Townsville CBD is in the line of fire of Australia’s islander community, inspired by an American push to destroy statues of Confederate soldiers who defended slavery.
Emelda Davis, president of the Australian South Sea Islanders ( Port Jackson), says Queensland needs to confront the reality of its past which includes the veneration of Robert Towns, after whom Townsville is named.
John Mackay, who pioneered the European settlement of Mackay in the 1860s, is also a target because of his involvement, along with Towns, in “blackbirding’’ – kidnapping islanders to work in the North’s sugar cane plantations.
“Both were blackbirders,’’ said Ms Davis, whose grandfather was taken off a beach in Vanuatu at age 12.
“We have to start telling the truth about our past.’’
South Sea islanders who have staged protests about the Towns statue for years want the entire site recalibrated and the wording rewritten to better reflect Queensland history. Ms Davis says removing Towns’ statue only obliterated the past.
“We want a cane cutter there right opposite Towns and we want the cane cutter’s family depicted and we would like to see the wording on the statue changed to reflect the fact that thousands of islanders were forcibly taken from their homes to create the Queensland sugar cane industry,’’ she said.
Former federal member for Hinkler Brian Courtice, who for decades has researched the South Sea islander labour trade, believes there were indisputable acts of enslavement in the 19th century to meet the state’s insatiable demand for sugar cane labourers.
“And we as Queenslanders have never properly acknowledged that,’’ says Mr Courtice, whose Bundaberg property has been formally identified with the aid of ground radar technology as hosting more than two dozen unmarked graves of South Sea islander labourers.
Professor Clive Moore, one of Australia’s most respected authors and academics on South Sea islander history, agrees there should be a more accurate record of the past in the Towns statue.
But he urges caution when interpreting history.
“I think it is true that communities in the North appear to have learned it is important not to offend the sensibilities of Aborigines, but have yet to learn about offending the sensibilities of South Sea islanders,’’ Professor Moore says.
He said it was historical fact that up to 700 voyages to the South Seas took place to collect labourers, that between 50,000 to 60,000 people were brought into Australia, that thousands died and that Australia at the dawn of Federation tried to expel them all as part of the White Australia policy.
But Towns’ involvement in blackbirding appeared to have been limited to contracting out his fleet of ships to bring in the labourers after he learned of the labour potential of the South Seas while investigating the sandalwood trade, he said.
Professor Moore says Mackay unquestionably played a role in blackbirding, but the city does not appear to have a statue of him.
Both Mackay and Towns were essentially the “capitalists of the day’’ – dedicated to making money in a number of avenues beyond the labour trade, he said.
Professor Moore said there were clear examples of some South Sea islanders coming to work in Queensland, returning home, then coming back to work in Queensland.
“Those cases suggest it was not all about slavery,’’ he said.
Towns has been depicted for more than a decade in a life- size statue sculpted by Jane Hawkins and placed near the central business district at the Ogden St entrance to Victoria Bridge.
Captain John Mackay’s exploration of the district in 1860 is marked at several points around the district including a monument where his party camped by the Pioneer River just west of the city.