Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [9]
Nearby was a huge exhibition of Aboriginal art from many parts of north Australia, works on bark and canvas in styles that owed nothing to Western art but much to an ancient culture and an almost incomprehensible spiritual world called the Dreamtime. As she wandered through the gallery, she felt a curious and exciting empathy with the work, although she didn’t actually understand it.
An arrow and a sign reading ‘Maritime Museum’ caught her eye and broke the trance-like state that she found herself in as she wandered through the Aboriginal display. She quickened her step and soon found herself in a gallery overlooking a collection of sailing craft unlike any she had seen in her life. There were the dugout and bark canoes of the Aborigines, tiny boats with odd-shaped sails and huge trading praus from the islands of Indonesia, a Vietnamese refugee boat, and outrigger canoes from Papua New Guinea. But what dominated the exhibition took her breath away.
It was a sparkling white pearling lugger with all sails rigged. Beside it was a display of an old pearl-diver’s suit with bulbous metal helmet. Suddenly she found herself thinking of the dashing seafarer whose photo she’d brought with her from her mother’s bag. She could just see him beside the helm of the lugger and the imagery brought a soft smile to her face. For several minutes she took in every detail of the boat and ran her hands along the curving lines of the hull.
‘Beautiful,’ she whispered, ‘just beautiful.’
From other exhibitions she learned that for centuries foreign ships had been visiting the northern waters and shores of Australia, long before Englishman, Captain James Cook, had laid eyes on the east coast of Australia. Golden-skinned men from Macassar had made this journey each December, sailing their praus on the north-west monsoon to trade cloth, metal tools, tobacco and rice for trepang and turtle shell. The dried trepang, sometimes called bêche-de-mer or sea slugs, were sold for a great profit to Chinese merchants for use in medicines as well as being a delicacy.
For several months these archipelago men lived, laboured and traded with the local tribes before returning when the south-east winds began.
The traders and seafarers who sailed with the monsoon winds were not settlers or imperialists. They were simple traders from the Spice Islands of the archipelago across the Timor Sea. So long as they observed the long-established cultural and trading customs, they were welcome visitors. Less welcome were the occasional off-course Portuguese and Dutch mariners cursing their navigational error of coming too far east from the Cape of Good Hope before turning north to their fortressed trading posts throughout the Malay world. If, through misfortune or need for fresh water and food they did go ashore, they usually fought with the local tribes and there was much loss of life on both sides.
Lily looked at her watch, took one last look at the lugger, then strode quickly to the reception desk to ask where she could find out more about pearling. An obliging young woman telephoned for a taxi after explaining Lily should visit the pearling museum in the wharf precinct in the centre of the city.
This time the taxi deposited her outside an old shed on the harbour below the steep bluff on which the city heart of Darwin had been built. She paid her five dollars and walked into what seemed to be a small dark cinema.
Fluorescent blue fights shone through large aquariums, the hissing and gushing of air inhaled and expelled with a gurgle of bubbles through an air hose came over the PA system. A small walk-in cave shaped like a half section of a diving helmet housed more exhibits and the glass viewing panel looked into a video screen showing underwater scenes of old-style pearl diving. A video played on a large screen telling the story of modern pearl farming. Panels of spotlit coloured photos showed needles being slipped into the muscle of oysters, followed