Sugar’s bitter slave history exposed in Mackay

Kidnapping, brutality and cruelty in Mackay is exposed in a new ‘bittersweet’ exhibition

KIDNAPPING, brutality and cruelty was part of Mackay's dark history that is being brought to light in a new exhibition.

Local historian Denis McCarthy has spent 50 years tracing the painful stories behind the arrival of South Sea islanders in the region.

The Mackay Regional Council exhibition in the JCC Foyer, follows the paper trails of South Sea islanders as they left their home, often by force, to Queensland ports and cane fields.

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Mr McCarthy said his journey started when he traced his wife's history, the Viti family, back to the Haleta village on the Florida Islands, Solomon Islands in 1975.

"Every time I went (to the islands) someone would tell me the name of someone who went to Australia and never came back," Mr McCarthy said.

For many who attended the exhibition's opening the photocopied documents were not just a scrap of history, but the story of their family.

‘Bittersweet’ gallery digs into Mackay’s brutal past

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Mirani MP Stephen Andrew voice shook when he spoke about his grandfather, whose name appeared under the Racecourse Mill documents that Mr McCarthy discovered.

"65,000 of our people came from the islands to work to carve this area out with their hands," Mr Andrew said.

"They worked their hands to the bones and I know they fell in the fields, and we're here today because of them"

It was a history Mr Andrew vowed to share with his daughters when they visited the JCC Foyer exhibition.

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Mayor Greg Williamson said the exhibition would be "bittersweet" for many elders in Mackay, who already knew the pain of blackbirding, deadly ships, brutal labour conditions, slavery and the forced deportation of their families.

"It's the sort of regional history we need to preserve," Cr Williamson said.

"If we all understand together we can walk forwards as a community."

Dawson MP George Christensen addressed the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Scott Morrison's comments that Australia did not have a history of slavery.

Mr Christensen said Mr Morrison was referring to the first colonies in NSW, which had outlawed slavery.

"Many things that went on there (during Queensland's blackbirding era) were illegal. Not just now, but at the time," he said.

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