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Name
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Mambare Bay
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Type of carceral site
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Blackbirding
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Dates of use
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1847 – 1906
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Quote
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The time honoured recruiting signal - a piece of dynamite set adrift on a board and exploded - was given, and the boat dropped away from the ship's side and headed for shore [...] such natives as were disposed to enlist for work on the plantations waded out through the shallows and were accepted or rejected according to their physiques. Then, with a full load of them, the whaleboat pulled off to us, discharged of its living fright, and returned for yet another.
Novel.
Walsh, J.M. Overdue: A Romance of Unknown New Guinea. The States Publishing Company, 1925, p. 60.
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Then began the - to the natives, at least - meaningless mummery of signing on. Each man was brought forward separately […] McClure signed the fellow' name, and the man attested his signature with whatever cabalistic sign constituted his idea of the 'white master's' writing.
Novel.
Walsh, J.M. Overdue: A Romance of Unknown New Guinea. The States Publishing Company, 1925, p. 61.
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This barbaric coast-line of New Guinea, inhabited only by savage monsters of huge stature and unappeasable ferocity, is really the boundary of a great empire, the Saturn ring of a new planet [...] more civilised than was ancient Mexico […] the El Dorado of Raleigh.
Short Story, Adventure Fiction.
Clarke, Marcus. The Australian Edition of the Selected Works of Marcus Clarke. Ferguson and Mirchell Printers, 1891, p. 350.
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MOLEN [remembering]: I am a very old man now, you see. I have lived a long life, and it will soon be time for me to die. From those who returned after the end of our contract in the plantation, I am the last man alive. Mally Bulla was everyone's favorite plantation; it is this story I want to tell you, and later, when you are a father of many children, you can tell it to them; and their children will tell their children's children. You are a lucky man today. I hear and see cars, trucks, and ships driven by engines […]
Radioplay.
Toro, Albert, director. Sugarcane Days. Radioplay, 1979. Recorded and collected by Tom Dutton. Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), collection TD1, item P02179. https://catalog.paradisec.org.au/object?id=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalog.paradisec.org.au%2Frepository%2FTD1%2FP02179.
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Authority
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Native Affairs Regulation No. 84; Native Plantation Ordinance 1918; Pacific Island Labourers Act 1880 (QLD)
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Archives and sources
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National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
National Archives of Papua New Guinea. National Library of Australia (Mambare River Region)
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Contact
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Dashiell?/Kieren
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identifier
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SITE-MBBY