An unfamiliar face at Labu Labi during the afternoon. Clearly not a regular. Nevertheless, when the chapatti and dip arrived—mince with peas—the invitation did not fail.
Join me. Smiling and gesturing toward the plate.
In this community one did not sit at table before food beside one who might be hungry. The famous code of hospitality common in so many places not so long ago.
Another encounter at the same tables the night before provided even greater surprise.
An accent from the great Southern land when least expected, coming from a face and features, from dress that had certainly never provided previously.
Ninety-nine percent of the Australian population would have been similarly mystified.
The last few years the territory had become infamous of course; even so, few could have pinned its true location on the map.
Christmas Island natives born and bred. Muslim Malay in fact.
Sixty the capped man with his scarfed wife, a carpenter named Zaini, who had a ninety year-old mother living on the island where she was born in the ‘20s.
Christmas Island: British subjects in childhood and early youth. The year of 1957 the British F.O. decreed it Australian territory.
The phosphate thereby assured. Circa Malayan Emergency, Mao, Korea, Vietnam getting hot. In case the dominoes fell the wrong way, the safe bet was Australia.
In the era of decolonisation, the British Crown overseeing the operation was unsuitable. Years later, after Singaporean independence, the first Chief Minister at the time was blamed for selling the island to the Australians cheaply. By that time the earnings from the phosphate was known, and also the size of the crabs found there that were denied the local cuisine.
Christmas Island became another Nauru. Not so rich in the bird droppings and therefore not so utterly devastated by the mining operation.
The arrangements on Christmas were similar to that in the resource-rich Straits region on the Equator: Indians shipped mainly for the rail-line and Chinese the labour. (Indentured workers, or coolies.)
Malays filled other labour requirements, like housing, maintenance & services.
As on the Cocos Islands, Ceylonese were down for policing.
The Brits knew very well what they were about, of course.
The associated racism and segregation, naturally, in this case stretching into much more recent time.
It was only in the early ‘80s that the signage warning Blackies and Yellows not to enter government precincts, municipal offices, &etc. was removed. The union official Gordon Bennett, who settled from the mainland, became instrumental in doing away with all that vile carry-over.
Zaini owned to some rock 'n' rolling in youth, playing guitar in various bands. When the music caught the ear of the White Man's Club—aka the Christmas Island Club—the President, or Secretary of same suggested to Zaini a show at their place.
Oh yeah, Mr So-and-so. We blackfellas aren't allowed to enter your premises, but you wan us to play for you?…
Visits to relatives in Singapore were an eye-opener for the young islanders like Zaini, a homecoming of sorts. Steerage passage annually on the cargo ships was provided gratis by The British Phosphate Commissioners.
There were still kampungs around Geylang Serai then, atap covered traditional houses, ten kids to a room on the floor. Christmas Island had plentiful coconuts, but not the spiky sci-fi durians found in Singapore.
Seventeen hundred kilometres West of Exmouth; two thousand Nor-west of Perth. Five hundred kilometres south of Indonesia.
Five hundred perilous kilometres in overloaded fishing vessels never intended for sea-faring in more recent time.
At the terrible ship-wreck of asylum-seekers December 2010, Zaini was at work on his PC when he saw a neighbour hurrying by outside. In the roiling waters people were desperately clinging to pieces of wreckage.
Nothing could be done; some tried.
One chap clung to a piece of wood while clutching a child in his other hand, before the pair finally went under.
Zaini’s wife worked as a cleaner at the Detention Centre.
The people had heard about the opium fed to the Chinese coolies on Mainland China. That was a few generations ago.
Some of the Chrissy Island coolies had lived into the second half of the century. You saw them on the island with their thick bamboo pipes, the brand on the hand, on the webbing between thumb and forefinger. The number had faded by then.
The British Phosphate Commissioners themselves you never saw; their operation was conducted from afar.
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