Please note that as of mid-2005 the web pages of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre are now located at http://www.vanuatuculture.org.

(Go back to the Blackbirding book)

This photo shows ni-Vanuatu who have finished their contract in Queensland on the boat going back to their islands. The men look happy, they have new clothes, and some are carrying rifles which are part of their payment for their contract work. This photograph is from 1880 or 1890 and comes from the J.A. Ferguson Collection in the National Library of Australia. It is now part of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre collection.

A South Efatese Chief (maybe from Fila island) with his men, visiting a blackbirding ship in 1885 or 1886. The chief has a white cockle shell on his chest, the sign of a chief in Efate and the Shepherd Islands. Captain W. Acland took the photo which is from the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University (Foto B. 39/1.d.)

Some recruiters or blackbirders with the crew of their boat. The rifles the crew are holding are to protect them when they go to find labourers to work in Queensland or Fiji. When they went ashore with two small boats, the ship stayed out from shore. We don't know who the white man in the middle is, maybe it is James Murray on the boat Carl, maybe it is Ross Lewin who worked as a blackbirder from 1863 until a Tannese man shot him dead in 1874. He shot him because Lewin had killed the Tannese man's cousin-brother.

This photo comes from National Library of Australia.

This picture shows a European ship carved into the rock in a cave on the northern island of Maewo.

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Date Last Modified: 25-September-97	URL: http://artalpha.anu.edu.au/web/arc/vks/blackpic.htm
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