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Listed under:  History  >  Social history  >  Significant people
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Pacific Islander labourers in the Mackay District, late 1800s

This posed black-and-white photograph shows indentured Pacific Islanders by their grass hut homes, probably on a Mackay sugar plantation in Queensland. Some are seated on logs or rough timber benches and one woman can also be seen. They are dressed in Western-style clothes. More huts can be seen on the cleared rise in the ...

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Pacific Islander women planting sugar cane at Bingera, c1897

This black-and-white photograph shows several indentured Pacific Islander women planting sugar-cane stalks, or setts, in freshly made furrows in a large field at Bingera near Bundaberg, Queensland. The women, dressed in Western-style clothes, are following directly behind a horsedrawn plough that is worked by indentured ...

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Pacific Islanders at irrigation channels, c1905

This sepia photograph shows around 20 Pacific Islander men posed on either side of a narrow irrigation channel in a cane field at Bingera Plantation near Bundaberg in Queensland. Some are holding long-handled hoes or shovels. A junction of the irrigation channel is visible in the foreground with equipment necessary to divert ...

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Pacific Islander labourers planting sugar cane, Mackay, 1870s

This is a black-and-white photograph showing large groups of poorly dressed indentured Pacific Islanders planting sugar cane on a plantation at Mackay in Queensland. Fourteen or more Pacific Islanders are manually placing sugar-cane cuttings at regular intervals in long furrows. Two mounted white men oversee their work ...

Interactive

Gold rush: level 2

Dig for gold on the Ballarat goldfields in 1865. Try your luck at alluvial or shaft mining. Buy a miner's permit, tools and enough supplies to last a month. Discover how hard life was on the goldfields. Explore a map showing the countries migrants left to join the gold rush in Australia. Find out which towns developed due ...

Interactive

Discovering democracy: the people make a nation

Interact with a slideshow of images and text to explore the controversies that the colonies needed to deal with before they could agree on a federated Australia. Investigate the library to find out more about the different views about trade, immigration, transport, defence and rivers. Examine the rivalries among the colonies ...