Women recognised for love and death in Broome pearling
Lifting the veil on Broome's secret history and the sacrifice of women in pearling
It was one of Broome's most beautiful and moving public ceremonies; the unveiling of a statue on the Roebuck Bay foreshore to commemorate women in the town's pearling history.
In particular Aboriginal women, and those of Aboriginal-Asian descent.
The bronze statue is of an Aboriginal woman desperately rising out of a wave with a pearl shell in her hand. It was created by West Australian sculptors Joan and Charlie Smith.
In the early days of the pearl shell industry Aboriginal women were captured and sold, through a trade called Blackbirding, and forced into diving.
Some women were made to dive to big depths, even while pregnant. This statue is of a pregnant diver.
Joan and Charlie Smith said it's taken them a decade to develop the statue, after they were approached by a group of local men and women who wanted to see another side of the pearling town shown.
The Smiths said there was very little research on the female divers when they began looking for material to start the design.
They describe the Aboriginal women pearlers as being a "secret history".
The pair told Lana Reed they hope the statue will make people curious, and to ask questions about the past.
"It's an act of remembering ... of making people aware of the real stories underlying the official histories," Charlie Smith says. "And to make sure these sorts of things never happen again."
The large bronze, akin to the figurehead on a ship's prow, looks over Roebuck Bay on the very place that families waited anxiously for the luggers to return home from sea.
Luggers with sails at half mast were a portent of death.
Some women were separated from their partners/brothers/fathers for weeks on end as the luggers plied the coast in search of shell. They had to keep families fed and together in the men's absence.
For some women they were also fighting inhumane Government policies of the time, especially if they had an inter-racial relationship.
Trish Jones's father Lani Fois was a Koepanger from the island of Roti, now in Indonesia and close to the Kimberley coast. Lani was a head diver and captain of a lugger for Morgan's Pearling Company.
His crime, says Trish who found court records in family files, was to fall in love with Yawuru woman Elsie Lee.
"My mother was a very beautiful, beautiful exotic looking woman and my father of course was a handsome Koepanger head diver," says Trish.
They met in the 1940s at many of Broome's social occasions - dances, music nights and cultural groups' festivals - which were well attended by locals of all backgrounds.
The couple had two children, but that didn't stop authorities from threatening Lani Fois with deportation to Roti if he did not cease his relationship.
"My mother was also pressured to into breaking off their relationship because he was Koepang and she was Aboriginal."
Lani received three official warnings, which Trish says she found in her mother's files from the Native Welfare office, before he was brought before the courts.
"The Broome Magistrate fined him three pounds six shillings for the crime of falling in love with my mother," Trish says. He was sent to work on a road camp in the east Kimberley not long after his second child was born.
"But fortunately love proved too strong and Lani came back to find her and they both lived together as husband and wife."
Trish was then born, but tragedy was soon to strike the family. Lani died aboard his lugger in a storm. Trish, the youngest of his three children, was just two years old.
The ceremony to unveil the statue was well attended on a sultry tropical evening. As huge clouds pulsed with lightning over the Bay, Broome women spoke of the sacrifices their families had made, the love and laughter, and the importance of never forgetting their stories when writing Broome's history.
Tears were in many eyes as white balloons were released at the end of the ceremony. They flew swiftly out over Roebuck Bay and disappeared into the white storm clouds.
Like sculptors Charlie and Joan Smith, Trish Jones hopes the statue helps draw out stories of Broome's past - stories that need to be told.
"It's important that we don't change [history] to suit the multicultural synergy of Broometown in years to come... to sanitise horrible stuff that happened."
Trish says the statue represents to her the Pearl Goddess of Broome.
"Because it captures the experiences and emotion of all women, especially the Aboriginal blackbirding divers and all our mothers and grandmothers and children who had to remain here in Broome while our men out in search of pearls."