Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows Broome, a town and port on Roebuck Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, in about 1940. It opens with a panoramic view of the township followed by a shot of ‘the lovely homes of the white residents’ and images of the ‘native quarter’. A steamer is shown docking at full tide and then beached on the mudflats at low tide. In the final sequence a Japanese diver in a copper helmet is lowered over the side of a pearl lugger and then seen resurfacing. There is a narration and light orchestral background music.

Educational value points

• Much of the clip is devoted to Broome’s pearling industry, described as 'a live and thriving industry’ but by about the time this footage was shot, the industry was in decline from its peak 30 years earlier. In 1910 Broome was the pearling capital of the world, employing 3,500 people, with about 400 pearl luggers operating. The industry never fully recovered from the effects of the First World War (1914-18) and there were only 73 luggers and 565 workers operating in 1940.

• The narrator reports that in 1940 ‘17 different races of people’ were living in the main street of Broome, highlighting the culturally diverse background of the workforce in the pearling industry. The industry attracted a workforce that included Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Malaysian divers, as well as Indigenous Australians. Migrants also worked as crews on luggers or in other support roles in the industry and some established themselves as merchants and traders.

• The distinction made in this clip between the ‘lovely homes of the white residents’ and the ‘native quarters’ reflects a racial division within Broome, where European and non-European residents were effectively segregated. Most of the pearling masters were European and inhabited spacious bungalows set among landscaped gardens, while the mainly Asian workforce was confined to the ‘native quarter’ with narrow lanes and corrugated iron houses.

• The language in the clip is an indication of the racial attitudes in this period, for example, the use of the blanket term ‘native’ to describe Broome’s diverse racial and cultural community positions it as ‘other’ to the European residents. For white viewers the word ’native’ implied that the relevant race was inferior to or less ‘civilised’ than Europeans.

• By the 1930s most of the divers in Broome were Japanese. They had a reputation as the best divers and were sought after by the pearling masters, yet they and other Asian divers were paid less than their European peers. Diving was arduous and hazardous work, with divers facing perils such as cyclones, shark attack, eye and ear infections and the ‘bends’.

• The pearling industry in Broome relied on its Japanese divers to such an extent that the industry was effectively crippled during the Second World War when Japanese residents were interned as ‘enemy aliens’. Some of the internees had lived in the community for more than 50 years, while others had been born and raised in Broome and had no ties to Japan.

• The clip shows a ‘hard hat’ diver in a vulcanised canvas diving suit, large copper helmet and lead-weighted boots being lowered over the side of a lugger. While these suits and helmets gave some protection, and had a rubber air hose that allowed the diver to stay under water for longer periods, they were cumbersome and difficult to move in.

• Pearlers set out in sail-powered luggers, such as the boats shown in this clip, on hard and monotonous voyages that lasted up to three months in quarters that were cramped and overrun with cockroaches and vermin. By the 1930s pearling luggers were increasingly motorised.