Historic stone walls built by South Sea Islander labourers more than a century ago are being demolished in northern New South Wales to make way for a hospital car park.
Attempts by members of the local community to save the walls in the town of Cudgen have failed despite fears they could also mark gravesites containing bodies of workers who died there.
Bulldozers have started removing the first of three dry stone walls on old sugar plantation land that are in the way of a planned staff car park for the new $580m Tweed Valley Hospital.
Tweed Vally South Sea Islanders pose with dry stone wall on hospital site before construction began. Source: Supplied
“[The walls] are important to us … sorry, I’m going to cry,” Louise Togo, secretary of the Tweed Valley South Sea Islander Association, told SBS News.
“They’re destroying a unique part of history, especially here in the Tweed. Historically along the east coast, SSI men and women were buried in the farmland.
“We’re destroying history for a carpark and a driveway.”
South Sea Islander cane cutters in Cudgen in 1928. Source: Tweed Regional Museum
Of five walls at the site, a 60-metre wall has been largely demolished, a 46-metre wall will also go, and a section of another 60m wall has been partially removed.
But for the South Sea Islanders - the Australian descendants of Pacific Islanders from more than 80 islands in the South Seas - the walls represent the blood, sweat and tears of their forebears.
South Sea Islander history expert Clive Moore says more research should have been done on the walls.
“In truth, we don’t know enough about the northern NSW South Sea Islanders because there’s been no dedicated research done,” the emeritus professor from the University of Queensland said.
“The only documentation in terms of heritage reports [for the Tweed Valley Hospital] is fairly slack in its referencing and only references other reports.
“There is every reason to suppose that at Cudgen, on that plantation, there are islanders buried there, whether they are under the walls, nobody would know unless there was proper research done.”
South Sea Islander Louise Togo outside the hospital construction site. Source: Stefan Armbruster/SBS
NSW Health Infrastructure - which oversees the planning, design, procurement and construction of health capital works in the state - said the community had been “consulted extensively” over the last two months ahead of the $580 million hospital construction which it says will meet “the urgent clinical needs” of the Tweed and Byron communities.
“The impacted walls have been appropriately catalogued and independent Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) surveying has been completed. The results have not revealed any features consistent with burials,” the department said in a statement.
Ms Togo said they had not been advised of the outcome of the GPR.
Forgotten history
The history of South Sea Islanders in Australia is largely untold, which includes their mass deportation after federation in 1901, though many remained, passing as Australian Indigenous people.
“There is no group that was worst treated by the Commonwealth government in the 1900s than the Pacific Islanders,” Professor Moore said.
“They are the forgotten people and bringing their history back is very important to them culturally, and giving belief in themselves as Pacific people living in Australia.”
Workers in Cugden. Source: Facebook/ @australiansouthsea
About 60,000 South Sea Islanders were transported mainly from Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, often forcibly in slave-like conditions, to work in the Queensland agriculture industry from the 1860s.
Known as “sugar slaves”, about a quarter died in Australia in what was known as the “blackbirding” trade.
About 200 islanders are recorded as working in the Tweed area from the 1890s, moving from colonial Queensland to New South Wales where they were offered better conditions and often equal pay with Europeans.
Their descendants now number in the thousands and include luminaries such as late civil rights activist Faith Bandler, who was born on the Tweed River.
Aunty Lill Engstrom carries a photo of her father by the wall he build about 120 years ago. Source: Stefan Armbruster/SBS
A nearby stone wall is preserved on private property and was built by Aunty Lill Engstrom’s father 120 years ago as he cleared the land for farming.
“They were slaves in Queensland, they had the whips on them, Australians wouldn’t like that at all,” she said.
“Dad jumped out of Queensland into New South Wales and that’s how we survived.
“It means a lot because this [wall] is history, and our people came down here with nothing to build this country, to make it what it is today,” she said proudly leading against the wall in Cudgen.
Source: Facebook
Just down the road is the Cudgen South Sea Islander burial ground, heritage-listed 20 years after headstones were removed in the 1980s and a golf course was built over some of the graves.
Aunty Felicia Cecil said: “You can just see the golf course but grandfather’s grave wasn’t just alone, there are a number of graves buried here,” pointing to a putting green from behind a chain fence.
Display rejected
NSW Health Infrastructure said it is planning a historical South Sea islander display using the removed wall stones.
“Consultation will continue with the local South Sea Islander community to further develop and finalise the concept proposals on how the history of the Tweed South Sea Islander community can be accessed and appreciated by current and future generations,” the department said.
“This includes both on and off-site reinterpretation options for the walls and ways to involve the community with the restoration of the remaining 80 per cent of the 750+ metres of walls on the site.”
Tweed Valley South Sea Islanders have previously rejected the offer.
“We didn’t want them to touch the wall and move the rocks, we did want them to remain in situ because they retain their cultural value and they're cultural meaning, once they move them, they're just rocks,” Ms Togo said.
