Preserving the Contract: The Experience of Indentured Labourers in the Wide Bay and Burnett Districts in the Nineteenth Century

On the cusp of the pastoral boom of the late 1840s, squatters in the Northern Districts of New South Wales dreamed of the reliable shepherd who could be bought for ten pounds per annum. In the remote Burnett and Wide Bay districts, this aim was realised by the importation of so-called Asiatic labourers, first from Bengal and then from China. In the 1860s, thousands of South Sea Islanders joined these coolie ranks, labouring mostly on the coastal sugar plantations, but also as shepherds on the pastoral runs in the hinterland. Each of these experiments with indentured coloured labourers was deemed a failure by the white employers. In strictly economic terms, this judgement was patently false. On the other hand, as this paper discusses, the assertiveness of the immigrant workers for contractual rights defied their masters' expectations of a cheap and docile labour force.