JAPANESE INVASION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3809, 16 September 1936, Page 3

JAPANESE INVASION

POACHING ON GREAT BARRIER. Lately there has been some concern in Australia because of the frequent appearances of Japanese vessels in its northern' waters and the casualness of landings made on isolated parts of the coast (writes Nellie Palmer in the Christian Science Monitor). Lighthouse keepers have reported the incursions of these Japanese; holidaymakers camping in quiet bays have been alarmed to see landing parties coming ashore to forage for wood and water. Naturally, the men fishing regularly for trochus and beche-de-mer have been disturbed by what they regard as the unfair competition of these Japanese from overseas, and have made serious protests to the Government. For it is to gather trochus that the Japanese come, and their visits are likely to raise a delicate international problem in the years immediately ahead. The crux of the problem is the Great Barrier Reef. For 1200 miles it runs up the Queensland coast, a tissue of islands, bays, coral reefs, making a breakwater against the long roll of the Pacific. Inside there is a smooth channel, carefully charted and used by overseas and coastal boats. There is the trochus shell, for instance. Something like 15,000 cwts. is exported from the Barrier waters every year, and the bulk of it goes to Japan. A coarse shell, it can be ground easily, and Japanese families, owning their own machines, have completely captured the shirt-button' market from Americans and Europeans, who use the more expensive pearl shell. Police Difficulties. Having camped recently for a year on a tiny island in the Great Barrier, I can understand the difficulty of policing such waters and also the local luggerman’s attitude toward intrusions from overseas. Our island was one of the little atolls that can be found all along the great reef. The human beings who visited us w’ere chiefly mainland fishermen and island luggerboys. During the last half century an important marine industry has grown up in Barrier waters. The headquarters of it is at Thursday Island, in Tories Straits, where luggers with trim lines and shallow draught are built for the trade, Australian owned, but manned by natives and usually skipped by Japanese. They comi south in March, at the

end of the rainy and cyclonic season, and work slowly northward, with the trade winds behind them, stopping a week or so in sheltered places and sending out small boats to dive for trochus, beche-de-mer, and sometimes pearl shell. Their activities are supervised by the Australian Government, which rigidly guards against spoliation of the reefs; it is illegal, for instance, to gather trochus shells measuring less than two and a half inches across the base. Supervision is made comparatively easy, because all the products gathered by these luggers must pass through Thursday Island, which is the clearing-house for shipments to China and Japan. Pleasant Occupation. Apart from the value of the industry. it. is definitely useful in finding a fairly pleasant occupation for numbers of natives, both islanders and coastal aboriginals, who would otherwise be hard pressed by advancing civilisation. Life on the water is traditional for them; diving for trochus and beche-de-mer has an element of sport in it like the ancient hunts for food. And the Government encourages them to take on certain responsibilities. I remember the first crowd of luggerboys who came to our island, strapping fellows with enough spare energy to amuse themselves by sailing races between their dinghies in the quiet waters of the lagoon. Their lugger lay at anchor outside the reef.

“Who owns your boat?” I asked, looking over toward it. One of them gave a proud headshake. “Nobody don’t own our boat. We own it!” I found out that on his island, Eadu, the Queensland Government had for some years been experimenting with a policy of advancing money to the natives so that they might buy their own boats and run them on a co-operative basis. The Government agreed to market the product, with a small margin for overhead, and it seems the policy has succeeded. The men have even learned to build their boats on their own slips, and the profits of the little community have gone into a general improvement in the standard of living. Likeable Crowd. A likeable crowd, those luggerboys of the Barrier! Racially, they are a mixed lot. Coming largely from islands in the Torres Straits (meeting point of different peoples for centuries), they show hints in the physiognomy of the Malay, the Polynesian, the Melanesian, the mainland aboriginal. Yet they have a strong local patriotism and a pride in the Barrier waters. A pride, also, in their singing. It was never difficult, once they had come ashore for a spell, to get them to give a sing-song in our camp. Their songs were usually simple repetitive lyrics they had made themselves or picked up from their friends, descriptions of sailing races between

dinghies, or storms at sea, of getting into port after a bad voyage. But they had corroborees, too, like those of the coastal aboriginals, a complicated network of song and dance, with humorous miming, concerted movements of great power and rhythm, and usually a drama to link all together.