Pearls

When I was a child, I was taught that Broome was the centre of the Australian pearl industry. Today I learnt a lot about it.

Pearl shells from the extended Kimberley coastline (let’s say roughly between Darwin and Dampier) have always been collected by local aborigines, decorated with ochre pigments, and worn by men of high status. There was an extensive trade in these shells. The local pearl shell is the largest of the five types of pearl shell, so these were pretty big shells.

When Europeans came to the area, they collected the shells and made them into buttons. It quickly became the third largest industry in Western Australia. At its peak, 75% of the world’s buttons came from here. Pearl shells in shallow waters were quickly depleted. So they started to dive to collect the shells from below the water. Local aborigines were taken from their homes and forced to dive. Divers came from other countries - mainly Malaysia and the Philippines as indentured labour. Japanese divers were in high demand because they could dive deeper and collect more shells, so they were paid more, and I’m not sure that they were indentured. 

Techniques changed, and hard hat diving started.

This coastline is the worst in the world for tropical storms (cyclones or hurricanes), and Broome was battered by several of them. Pearling could only occur during half of the year, and in the off season all the pearling Lugers were anchored in Dampier creek (the mangroves had all been chopped down). The First World War meant that the pearling industry was very hard hit. Nobody wanted pearl buttons, and all the men went to war. However, the Second World War was worse. All the men went to war, the Japanese divers went to internment camps. But then the Japanese attacked the top half of Australia, and the government decided on a scorched earth policy, destroying most of the pearling infrastructure and evacuating women and children south.

Broome was one of the first two places attacked. Firstly Darwin was attacked, and then shortly afterwards Broome. Broome was an airbase, but, at the time it was seen as safe, and all the Dutch women and children were evacuated via Broome from what’s now Indonesia. Over 800 of them were about to leave. They used flying planes on Roebuck bay to load the refugees. They walked across the sand to the planes, waited for the water to come in and took off. Shortly before they were due to take off all the flying planes were strafed by an unexpected Japanese attack, and all but one was destroyed (it took off). At least 80 people died. The airbase was also destroyed.

It was very difficult for the top end of Australia to rebuild after the war, and pearling was no exception. The Japanese divers were sent back to japan, and there wasn’t much equipment left. Then, in the 1950s, plastic replaced pearl buttons.

Very few salt water pearl shells ever produce pearls. However, the Japanese developed cultured pearls, using their much smaller pearl shell (a pearl place had a display of the five different pearl shells, and the Japanese one was the smallest). Over many years, some Australians worked with Japanese to develop the techniques to the enormous Australian pearl. So Broome is now the centre of South Sea pearl production, which (according to them) is the most sought after pearl in the world.