PastMasters

Name: PastMasters
Address: Darwin, NT, AU
Telephone: +61419810928

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Darwin, NT
PastMasters

We are a DGR approved, not-for-profit Heritage Research Institute for North Australia

Kilwa's beaches in East Africa have yielded tiny copper coins & broken pottery. The coins begin c950AD & the pottery includes Chinese Celadon (qingci) of a similar age. Kilwa coins c900 years old were found on Arnhemland's Wessel Islands in 1944. Kilwa was sacked by the Portuguese in 1513 - they were established on Timor in 1515 so were they the vector. The last millennium is a useful period in wh

ich to explore the notion of vessels running south to avoid pirates or to stage at freshwater sites moving westward to Cape Wessel where the fresh SE Trade would carry them northwards and home. Our work is an amalgam of western science and Aboriginal cultural knowledge to winnow hard fact from myth and lead us to the evidence of Australia's earliest visitors.

07/06/2026

One of our intrepid PastMasters (MH) is down the Limmen Bight where the local oral history tells of two Chinese gardeners who had a market garden on Maria Island to supply the Overland Telegraph Camp, 70 miles up the Roper River, at Leichhardt’s Bar. There was a coal cache on the island for auxiliary & paddle steamers but this market garden is new to us - so if anyone can help with more information……please tell.

06/06/2026

Back in the 1980s at Shepherdson College (Elcho Island), there was a collection of Yolngu stone blades from the former Macassan trepang base of Gamninamirr in Mandjikay territory in the Cadell Strait (known as Ujung Lamburon to the Macassans). This was an extraordinary display by the Yolngu teachers for it brought to life the patterns of economic exchange during the trepang era (as detailed by anthropologist Donald Thomson). These beautifully crafted stone tools from a range of rock types (in their raw unfinished state) were sourced to the Arnhemland interior, including the famous Ngilipidji stone quarry. Yolngu had sent these important ritual objects to the coastal clans who were in a trading relationship with the visitors. They did so in full expectation of receiving Macassan trade items from their Yolngu kin in return, like iron tools, cloth, and to***co. The fishermen might also have taken some spear points as souvenirs, like the smaller one shown here which would have made a nice pendant. When the Macassans ceased coming to Australia in 1907 after more than 150 years, these items, which would have been bundled in paperbark, must have been left on the slowly eroding beach as the locals moved to other campsites. (The mangroves at Gambinamirr had been chopped down for the special trepang cooking and dying process, and the former base of operations is now under water).

05/06/2026

In 1562, Portuguese Dominicans built a fort on Solor Island in central Indonesia (shown here) as a staging post on the route to Timor. In time, a mixed race community of ‘Black Portuguese’ grew up around the fort. In 1598, some moved to Larantuka in Flores and became increasingly active in Timor, where they were known as Topasses, intermarrying with the native ruling families and eventually gaining control over the trade in sandalwood, beeswax and slaves. As the wealth of the Topasses grew they soon eclipsed the power of the native rulers and the ‘white Portuguese’. There has been considerable speculation about slavery being conducted by the Portuguese from Timor on the Tiwi Islands, though Topasses are rarely in the spotlight. For a recent critical review of the literature from the Tiwi side, see Steven Farram (2022) ‘The Tiwi of Melville Island, the Portuguese of Timor, and Slavery.’

04/06/2026

In 1725, Makassar—shown here in a drawing by Pieter van der Aa of Leiden—was under the strict control of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and still adjusting from the massive upheaval of the Makassar War which saw the dispersal of members of the Gowa and Tallo Sultanates. At this time, Makassar functioned as a colonial trading hub rather than the independent, multi-ethnic free port it had been a century prior. The local Chinese population was very small, with historical records indicating fewer than 40 residents, but they played a crucial role in linking Makassar's various trade markets with the VOC’s headquarters in Batavia. With the start of the Macassan trepang industry in northern Australia several decades later, the number of Chinese merchants would increase significantly. China was the ultimate destination for Arnhemland trepang for it was highly prized as a culinary delicacy and believed to possess potent medicinal properties, including use as an aphrodisiac. For Yolngu, its significance was purely totemic. There’s a fascinating myth from Cape Arnhem of the ‘Dreaming’ trepang shooting out its guts (which it often does when handled) and capsizing the canoe of a fisherman. This was a sacred place and he shouldn’t be there.

03/06/2026

For those interested in the possibility of a Portuguese ‘discovery’ of Australia, the story of the carrack ‘Sao Paulo’ is noteworthy. This merchant ship was built in 1554 in Cochin, India and became a regular on the Lisbon (Portugal)-India run. Then, in 1558, it was deployed on an experimental route from the Portuguese colony of Brazil to Sumatra without the aid of charts or sailing instructions, mapping the tiny uninhabited volcanic island of Ile Saint-Paul on the way. It lies roughly 3,000km from the nearest continents of Africa and Australia and would become a crucial marker for later vessels riding the ‘Roaring Forties’ to the East Indies. In 1561, on its second voyage to what is now Indonesia, the ‘Sao Paulo’ was wrecked near Sumatra, the harrowing ordeal being chronicled in the Portuguese anthology of maritime disasters known as the Historia Tragico-Maritima. And here is the conundrum. The voyages of the ‘Sao Paulo’ are very well documented, but the Portuguese ships that supposedly mapped northern and eastern Australia as evidenced in the Dieppe maps, in particular the Jean Rotz’s 1542 Mappa Mandi, are completely unknown.

02/06/2026

For months at a time, the Wessels, a spectacular 120-kilometre chain of coral-fringed rocky islands, are buffeted by the north-west trade winds from Indonesia. From time immemorial, these Yolngu lands have acted as a type of catcher’s mitt, not just for flotsam and jetsam but for all the Arafura Sea traffic blown south of their intended course. Is it any wonder then that these islands are the scene of one of Australia’s greatest mysteries, Arnhemland’s African coins?

01/06/2026

The strikingly original artwork of Warramiri elder Terry Yumbulul, a traditional owner of the Wessels and English Company’s Islands of northeast Arnhemland, ranges from sculptures and paintings of sea-based clan deities (Ngulwardo and Marryalyan) to purely decorative totemic themes. He has been a supporter of, and advisor to, our African Coins in Arnhemland project since its inception n 2013. For more on Warramiri art traditions, see John Cawte’s ‘The Universe of the Warramiri. Art, Medicine and Religion in Arnhem Land.’

31/05/2026

Australia's oldest known shipwreck was in 1622 when the British ship Trial--on course to deliver supplies to the English East India Company in Bantam (Java) and to trade in Batavia (Jakarta)—struck a reef near the Montebello Islands in WA's north (now known as the Tryal Rocks). Nearly one hundred crewmen lost their lives. The remaining crew spent a week ashore before sailing onwards in two longboats. On the basis of the African coin discovery on the Wessels in 1945, we suspect that there are other much older shipwrecks in NT waters. Shown here is an unidentified East India trading vessel from the late 1600s.

30/05/2026

There has been a surge in Indonesian boat incursions on the NT coast in the past year including two apprehensions off Cape Wessel by the Australian Border Force-led ‘Operation Lunar’. The majority of these apprehensions involve illegal fishing operations but several also included Chinese asylum seekers. See the book by our colleague Natasha Stacey (2007) ‘Boats to Burn: Bajo Fishing Activity in the Australian Fishing Zone’ for a history of visitation of these fishermen from West Timor and South Sulawesi going back to the Macassan trepang days and earlier.

29/05/2026

A bronze statue of Tiwi man Matthias Ulungura was unveiled on Bathurst Island in 2016. Mr Ulungura captured the first Japanese prisoner of war on Australian soil in 1942. Japanese pilot Hijime Toyoshima had crashed-landed on Melville Island during air raids on Darwin in 1942. Matthias’ granddaughter Flora Tipungwuti remembers how he told her that he saw the plane go down and that he ordered his family to hide in the bushes. “So he crept behind a tree and then he just ran and took the gun off him and he poked him with his tomahawk and said ‘stick em up, I'm Hopalong Cassidy'. The Japanese pilot was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Cowra NSW and became one of the leaders of the 1944 Cowra breakout that saw 1,104 Japanese prisoners attempt to escape.

Address

Darwin, NT

Telephone

+61419810928

Website

https://www.pastmasters.org.au/

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