Reconciling the dark history of slavery and murder in Australian pearling, points to a brighter future

Descended from a murderous slaver as well as those he enslaved, Terry Hunter's efforts to reconcile his family history confront the dark past of Australia's pearling industry.

Terry Hunter is a descendent of Harry Hunter, one of the many notorious pearlers from the early years of the pearl shell industry.

But he's also the descendent of the Bardi and Jawi, the Aboriginal people who live at the tip of the Dampier Peninsula where crystal clear oceans swirl over rugged rock and coral reef of Australia's north-west.

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of people who have died and content which may cause distress.

Not long after arriving from England in the 1870s, police records and eyewitness accounts describe how Harry Hunter settled into a brutal existence trading in pearl shell and human lives.

"From what I hear from my grandfather and my uncles, he was a pretty violent man at that time," Terry Hunter says.

In the late 1800s slavery had long been abolished in the British Empire and the United States, but in north-west Australia it was a mainstay of the burgeoning pearl shell industry.

Numerous police and government reports record how Aboriginal people from the Pilbara and Kimberley regions were forced to work as divers, swimming without any equipment from pearl lugger boats.

Slave traders were known as blackbirders and would round up Aboriginal men at gunpoint and sell them to pearling captains.

At its peak, blackbirding was a flagrant practice, as described in an excerpt from a report by Government Resident Colonel E.F. Angelo in 1886, when he named three white men who,

"...publicly advertised themselves to procure and put niggers aboard at five pounds a head for anybody, or shoot them for the Government at half a crown a piece."

Numerous police reports describe Harry Hunter caught on land with Aboriginal men in chains, or accused of beating and drowning Aboriginal men and children on pearling boats.

"It was a very brutal time, because if the younger ones didn't come up with mother-of-pearl shell, he would knock them on the head and send them back down again," Mr Hunter said.

"He was definitely a slaver, and also a murderer."

Slaver, murderer, and a family man

Terry Hunter speaks of his murderous, slave driving great, great grandfather with extraordinary matter-of-factness.

He does not shy away from the horrific crimes Harry Hunter committed, but perhaps more extraordinarily, he can see a positive side to the man.

"Coming from that dark side of the pearling industry, I can't push that aside because it's a part of me, and a part of my history," Mr Hunter said.

The pearling industry changed rapidly in the late 1880s with the introduction of hardhat divers wearing copper helmets and canvas dive suits.

The focus for labour began shifting from Aboriginal people to Asian divers, though Harry Hunter continued pearl shelling with large Aboriginal crews.

He also started to settle down in the traditional country of the Bardi people on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome.

It was near what became known as Hunter's Creek near Cape Leveque, or Bulgin to local people, that Harry Hunter established himself as a kind of lord over a community of his own making.

Through a mix of violent intimidation and the provision of food, work and protection from other colonists, Harry Hunter acquired what has been described as a harem of more than half-a-dozen mostly Bardi wives through which he had countless children.

As well as being a brutally violent person, Harry Hunter is recorded as being fond of his many children who were all put to work as boat builders, sailors, cooks, and farmers.

It is an almost incomprehensible contradiction that Terry Hunter ascribes some of the successes of the large Hunter family to their murderous patriarch.

"He took care of all of his children … he taught the Hunter men and women how to get out there and be in the workplace and to move forward.

"I've still got a great work ethic that's trickled down from that old fella."

Reconciling pearling past and future

The old pearl shell industry finally ground to an end through a combination of the interruption of WWII in Australia's north, followed by the popularisation of plastics replacing mother-of-pearl in manufacturing.

But the new cultured pearl industry, developed in Japan where pearl oysters were seeded to produce a pearl gem for the jewellery industry, was about to arrive on Australian shores.

With the new industry came some with new attitudes to Aboriginal people.

"The Brown family had this positive input into Indigenous families in the area," Mr Hunter said.

Dean Brown arrived at Cygnet Bay in 1946, taking up a pearling lease while also treating local Bardi people as his equals.

"Living with the Indigenous people, the Browns were shunned, 'What are you doing out there with these Indigenous people? Whites and blacks shouldn't mix together'," Mr Hunter said.

"He was way before his time, but he had a vision."

Terry Hunter's family lived and worked on their traditional country at what became one of Australia's first cultured pearl farms.

As a child in the 1980s he grew up alongside Dean Brown's grandson, the current general manager of Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, James Brown.

"We had the most beautiful upbringing out here at Cygnet Bay because we were a very multicultural little community out here," Mr Hunter said.

"James spent most of his childhood at my place, so he was just like a brother to me."

It was only in adulthood that Mr Brown and Mr Hunter began to learn of the early history of the pearl shell industry and the atrocities committed by people like Harry Hunter.

"It's quite confronting to really try and take on all of these atrocities that happened," Mr Brown said.

"We are literally now just really coming to terms with the extent of it."

Mr Brown believes that reconciling the dark history of Australian pearling will help heal relationships and allow the industry to realise its true value.

"The use of pearl shell in ceremonies, the use of pearl shell in carving and trading, I think there is real opportunity in that space, not just for traditional owners," he said.

"If Broome and the Kimberley region can come to terms with its history, and then work together, it's actually got a depth that is unbelievable."

Terry Hunter now works as a guide on the pearl farm he grew up on.

Tourism has become an important part of Cygnet Bay's business model, and Mr Hunter is passionate about telling the story of pearling in Australia and how it has impacted Indigenous people for better and for worse.

"I think it's probably the right time now to bring that story out there; there is a dark time in the pearling industry," he said.