Broome: How Did Pearling Create a Diverse Yet Divided Town?

Broome sits on Yawuru Country on the south-west Kimberley coast of Western Australia. When the townsite was gazetted in 1883, pearling camps already stood along Roebuck Bay; rich beds of pearl shell then drove the port’s rapid growth. The resulting “diversity” was not the easy cultural encounter celebrated by later festivals. Aboriginal people had been coerced or forced into shell gathering. Divers and crews later arrived from Japan, China, the Philippines and islands now within Indonesia, sustaining the industry under indenture, immigration restrictions and hazardous conditions at sea.

The town’s geography made those relations visible. European boat owners generally occupied spacious homes at one end, while Asian and other non-European residents lived and traded mainly in Chinatown. Foreign workers could possess exceptional skills yet remain constrained by licensing and residency rules. Broome did not first become diverse and only later unequal: diversity and segregation were produced together by the same pearling economy.

The clearest evidence is not an ornate building but Broome Cemetery, in use since the late 1890s. It still contains designated Japanese, Chinese and Muslim sections. The cemetery records communities that worked, formed families and supported one another, while also showing that they did not enter the town on equal terms. To understand Broome, pearls cannot be treated only as beautiful commodities, nor multiculturalism as local colour. Its history must hold together labour and maritime skill, connections across seas, institutional exclusion, and Yawuru people’s continuing relationship with Country.

https://www.broome.wa.gov.au/Council/About-the-Shire-of-Broome/Our-Heritage
https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/lustre-online-text-panels/master-pearlers
https://www.broome.wa.gov.au/Community/Community-Services/Cemetery