 A Macassan wooden sailing vessel or prau. Macassan trepangers from the southwest corner of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) visited the coast of northern Australia for hundreds of years to fish for trepang (also known as sea cucumber or "sandfish"), a marine invertebrate prized for its culinary and medicinal values in Chinese markets. These visits have left their mark on the people of Northern Australia — in language, art, economy and even genetics in the descendants of both Macassan and Australian ancestors that are now found on both sides of the Arafura and Banda Seas. Image File history File links Maccassan Prau - old photo File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Image File history File links Maccassan Prau - old photo File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...
Makassar, (Macassar, Mangkasar) is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. ...
Trepanging is the collection or harvesting of sea cucumbers, also called trepang. One who does this activity is called a trepanger. ...
Location of Sulawesi Island (light green) among the various islands of Indonesia. ...
Orders Subclass Apodacea Apodida Molpadiida Subclass Aspidochirotacea Aspidochirotida Elasipodida Subclass Dendrochirotacea Dactylochirotida Dendrochirotida The sea cucumber is an echinoderm of the class Holothuroidea, with an elongated body and leathery skin, which is found on the sea floor worldwide. ...
The Arafura Sea is the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea. ...
Bandasee The Banda Sea is the sea of the South Moluccas in Indonesia, technically part of the Pacific Ocean but separated from it by hundreds of islands, as well as the Halmahera and Ceram Seas. ...
The Voyages Historians are unsure as to when the journeys began from Ujungpandang (Makassar) to the place the Macassans called Marege.[1] — the north coast of Australia. Trepang trade from Makassar appears to have began around 1720, though some writers suggest the voyages began 300 years earlier. The extent of their journeys ranged thousands of kilometers, from the Kimberleys in the west to Mornington Island in the east of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Makassar, (Macassar, Mangkasar) is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. ...
// Events January 6 - The Committee of Inquiry on the South Sea Bubble publishes its findings February 11 - Sweden and Prussia sign the (2nd Treaty of Stockholm) declaring peace. ...
The Kimberley is one of the nine regions of Western Australia, consisting of the local government areas of Broome, Derby-West Kimberley, Halls Creek and Wyndham-East Kimberley. ...
Mornington Island is one of 22 islands part of the Wellesley Islands. ...
The Gulf of Carpentaria viewed from orbit. ...
The trade began to dwindle toward the end of the 19th century due to the imposition of customs duties and licence fees by Australian governments that made it unviable, and after the introduction of legislation to protect Australia's "territorial integrity", the last Macassan prau left Arnhem Land in 1906. Demand for trepang may have also dropped off due to unrest in China at the time. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Arnhem Land is an area of 97,000 km² in the north-eastern corner of the Northern Territory, Australia. ...
1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...
The history of China is told in traditional historical records that go back to the Three sovereigns and five emperors about 5,000 years ago, supplemented by archaeological records dating to the 16th century BC. China is one of the worlds oldest continuous civilizations. ...
Matthew Flinders in his circumnavigation of Australia in 1803 met the Macassan trading fleet near present day Nhulunbuy, an encounter that led to the establishment of settlements on Melville Island and the Coburg Peninsula. Captain Matthew Flinders. ...
1803 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
Nhulunbuy () is the name of the township created on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory of Australia when a bauxite mine and deep water port were established nearby in the late 1960s. ...
Melville Island lies off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. ...
Fishing and processing of trepang Trepang lie motionless on the sea floor, and are exposed at low tide. Fishing was done by hand, spearing, diving or dredging. The catch was placed in boiling water before being dried and smoked, to preserve the trepang for the long journey back to Makassar and other South East Asian markets, to eventually end up in China. Trepang is valued for its jelly-like texture, its flavour-enhancing properties, and as a stimulant and aphrodisiac.
Remains of some of these processing plants from the 18th and 19th centuries can still be found at Port Essington, Anuru Bay and Groote Eylandt, along with stands of tamarind trees. Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Gurig National Park in Australias Northern Territory. ...
Groote Eylandt from space, November 1989 Groote Eylandt is the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northeastern Australia and is the homeland of and is owned by, the Anindilyakwa people. ...
Binomial name Tamarindus indica L. This article refers to the tree – for other uses see Tamarindo (disambiguation). ...
Effect on peoples of Australia While markedly different from their experience of colonisation by the British, the Macassan contact with Aboriginal people had a significant effect on their cultures. The visits are remembered vividly today, through oral history, songs and dances, and rock and bark paintings, as well as the cultural legacy of transformations that resulted from the contact. Indigenous Australians or Aborigines[1][2] are the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. ...
Oral history is an account of something passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. ...
The Macassans exchanged goods such as cloth, tobacco, knives, rice and alcohol for the right to fish in Aboriginal waters, and to employ Aboriginal labour. Such products brought with them new opportunities as well as new challenges, such as the dangerous combination of knives and alcohol.
Some Yolngu communities of Arnhem land re-figured their economies from being largely land-based to largely sea-based with the introduction of Macassan technologies such as dug-out canoes. These seaworthy boats, unlike their traditional bark canoes, allowed Yolngu to fish the ocean for dugongs and turtles. Location of Yolngu (yellow/green, top right) in the Northern Territory Dangu redirects here. ...
Binomial name Dugong dugon (Müller, 1776) Natural range of . ...
blue: sea turtles, black: land turtles Suborders Cryptodira Pleurodira See text for families. ...
Some Aboriginal workers willingly accompanied the Macassans back to their homeland across the Arafura Sea. The Yolngu people also remember with grief the abductions and trading of Yolngu women, and the introduction of smallpox, which was epidemic in the islands east of Java at the time. Location of Yolngu (yellow/green, top right) in the Northern Territory Dangu redirects here. ...
Smallpox (also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera) is a highly contagious disease unique to humans. ...
Java (Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese: Jawa) is an island of Indonesia and the site of its capital city, Jakarta. ...
A Macassan pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast, not just between Macassans and Aboriginal people, but also between different Aboriginal groups, who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Macassan culture. Words from the Macassan language can still be found in many contemporary Aboriginal languages of the north coast. A widespread example is the word Balanda meaning 'white person' (which originally came to the Macassan language from the Dutch, "Hollander"). Some of the goods traded by the Macassans spread far across the country, even to the south. A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. ...
Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...
The Macassans may have also been the first to bring Islam to Australia.[2] [3] Islam in Australia is the third commonest religion after Christianity and Buddhism. ...
Current situation Though prevented from fishing across Arnhem Land, other Indonesian fishermen have continued to fish up and down the west coast, in what are now Australian waters, as they have done for hundreds of years before such territories were declared — some in traditional boats that their grandparents owned. Such fishing is considered illegal by the present-day Australian government, and since the 1970s, if caught by authorities, the boats are burned and the fishermen are returned to Indonesia. Most Indonesian fishing in Australian waters now occurs around Ashmore Reef and the nearby islands. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...
Ashmore and Cartier Islands The Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands are two groups of small low-lying uninhabited tropical islands in the Indian Ocean situated on the edge of the continental shelf north-west of Australia and south of the Indonesian island of Roti at 12°14′ S...
See also Trepanging is the collection or harvesting of sea cucumbers, also called trepang. One who does this activity is called a trepanger. ...
// Prehistory and aboriginal legends Humans first arrived in Australia through Indonesia and New Guinea, either by paddling canoes across the Timor Sea or by crossing a land bridge across what is now Torres Strait, between New Guinea and Australia. ...
Location of Yolngu (yellow/green, top right) in the Northern Territory Dangu redirects here. ...
Notes
References McIntosh, I. S. (2000) Aboriginal Reconciliation and the Dreaming. Allyn and Bacon, Boston. |
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