MIXED RELATIONS: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia

MIXED RELATIONS: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia. By Regina Ganter. Crawley (WA): University of Western Australia Press (distributed by International Specialized Book Services, Portland, OR), 2006. xv, 280 pp. (Maps, figures, photos.) US$49.50, paper. ISBN 1-920694-41-2.

Ganter's previous northern Australia work, The Pearl-Shellers of Torres Strait (1994), was a short but well-enough received account of the Queensland pearling industry. This time, Ganter had Australian Research Council funding for a much lengthier treatment of relationships between Aborigines, people from the Indonesian archipelago, Japan, China, Ceylon and European Australians (despite their omission from the tide) over a wider arc of northern Australia, from Broome to Thursday Island.

The Asian visitors to the western and central part of this area prior. to the twentieth century have become known by the shorthand "Macassans"; Ganter expands this to people who sailed from the port city of Makassar, Sulawesi, Bugis from the neighbouring kingdom of Bone, people from the islands of Aru and Timor,...