{"id":43247,"date":"2020-04-03T05:43:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T05:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=43247"},"modified":"2020-04-03T09:11:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T09:11:27","slug":"the-sri-lankan-settlers-of-thursday-island-by-stanley-j-sparkes-and-anna-shnukal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/the-sri-lankan-settlers-of-thursday-island-by-stanley-j-sparkes-and-anna-shnukal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island \u2013 By Stanley J. Sparkes and Anna Shnukal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Responsive --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5123580823957590\" data-ad-slot=\"7875984934\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island \u2013 By Stanley J. Sparkes and Anna Shnukal<\/span><\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Introduction<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">The dismantling of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s, allied with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">periodic civil strife in their homeland, brought significant numbers of Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Lankan immigrants to Australia. Few Australians, however, are aware that, a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">century before, hundreds of mostly male \u2018Cingalese\u2019 (as Sri Lankans were then <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">called),2 mainly from the southern coastal districts of Galle and Matara in the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">British colony of Ceylon, came as labourers to the British colony of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Queensland.3 The first of these arrived independently in the 1870s to join the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Torres Strait pearling fleets, but larger numbers were brought to Queensland a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">decade later as indentured (contract) seamen on Thursday Island and, shortly <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">thereafter, as farm workers for the cane fields around Mackay and Bundaberg, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">where many of their descendants still live. The arrival of the first batch of 25 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">indentured Sri Lankan seamen on Thursday Island in 1882 coincided with the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">importation of \u2018Malays\u2019 and Japanese. Yet, unlike the latter, comparatively little<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">has been published on their origins, lives and destinies, nor their contributions <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">to the business, social and cultural life of Thursday Island. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Some of those first arrivals demonstrated a remarkable entrepreneurial <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">flair, taking up employment as \u2018watermen\u2019 (boatmen), ferrying passengers and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">cargo from ship to shore and subsequently taking out licences as small <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">businessmen: boarding-house keepers, billiard-room proprietors, shopkeepers, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">pawnbrokers, boat-owners, gem and curio hawkers and commercial fishermen.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">They were joined by professional jewellers, part of the Sri Lankan gem-trade <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">diaspora into the islands of South-East Asia during the last decade of the 19th <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">century. Although never as numerous as some other Thursday Island Asian <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">communities, the Sri Lankans were perceived as a distinctive group and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">inhabited a recognised \u2018Cingalese quarter\u2019: a cluster of buildings \u2014 boarding <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">house, billiard room, store and dwelling houses \u2014 located at the eastern end of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Victoria Street. Religious life was centred on the Buddhist temple. Yet, after two <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">decades, only 20 individuals remained. The decision to leave was influenced by <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">economic difficulties in the marine industries and, it is said, increasing <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">uneasiness among community members who feared the confiscation of their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">assets and either internment in or expulsion from a newly federated Australia.4 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Most of them, however, did not return to their homes in Sri Lanka but took <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">their skills, experience and newly acquired capital to Singapore, Malaysia,<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Indonesia and other parts of South-East Asia.5<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">First Arrivals<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sri Lankan seamen joined hundreds of other outsiders in the Torres Strait pearl <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">rush of the 1870s. One independent arrival was the seaman, James, who, with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">three others, was engaged by Police Magistrate H. M. Chester on Thursday Island <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on 31 May, 1879, to travel south to Brisbane and bring back the Government <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">schooner, Pearl. His monthly wages were specified as \u00a33.10 but, reliable crewmen <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">being hard to procure at that time, Chester was obliged to give him \u00a31 to secure <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the contract.6 He may be the enterprising James Appu De Silva, who, in 1885, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">ran the Cingalese boarding house and went on to establish several other <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">businesses. Another independent arrival was Assan Ceylon, who told an inquiry <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in 1901 that he had been diving in Torres Strait since about 1879.7 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">James and Assan Ceylon may have been among the 20 Sri Lankans who, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">by 1882, were already living in Queensland and who found the place to be <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018quite satisfactory\u2019.8 There are also oral accounts from Torres Strait Islanders and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Papua New Guineans claiming Sri Lankan connections that predate the arrival <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of the first indentured seamen. One was the husband of Konai from Erub <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(Darnley Island). His name is forgotten, but he is said to have fathered three <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">daughters, Morabisi, Sophie and Balo, born on Erub in the 1870s.9 Another <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">may have been the diver, Yusuf (known locally as John Joseph Bombay).10<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mass Indenture<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Organised mass migration of Sri Lankans to Thursday Island began officially on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">12 June, 1882, when Scottish businessman James Burns (of Burns Philp &amp; Co.), <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">acting as agent for the pearl-shellers, secured the services of some 25 \u2018Cingalese\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">from the Galle area. Burns had recently imported 50 \u2018Malays\u2019 on three-year <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contracts from Singapore and had had no difficulty in finding shellers to employ <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">them. In his letter to the Colonial Secretary of Ceylon, dated 19 June, 1882, he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">expressed his intention of increasing the number of Sri Lankan indents to 100 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018in a few months time\u2019. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The 25 men James Burns initially recruited were undoubtedly eager to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">work in Torres Strait. They, like the Chinese, Indonesians, Filipinos, Japanese, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Pacific Islanders and Europeans, were attracted by the prospect of making their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">fortune. Pearling was \u2018in full swing\u2019, new shelling stations were being established<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">under a recently instituted system of official lease agreements, and demand for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">labour was at a premium at a time when the entire population of Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island \u2018white and coloured [did] not exceed a hundred\u2019.11 Some of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">newcomers may have gained prior experience in the pearl fields of the Gulf of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mannar and would have been anxious to try their luck in Torres Strait.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Moreover, as the historian, Swan, points out, there were economic <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pressures at home that \u2018pushed\u2019 the men to seek employment elsewhere. The Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lankan coffee industry had collapsed in the 1870s and 1880s due to blight and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">times were difficult.12 Perhaps fearing that the Colonial Secretary might veto <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their plans, they went with Burns to the Police Magistrate in Galle and signed a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contract, declaring that they were \u2018free British subjects belonging to the British <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Colony of Ceylon\u2019, who understood English and Sinhalese, and were desirous of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">proceeding to \u2018the British Colony of Queensland in Australia\u2019 to serve in the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Torres Strait marine industries for three years. They were to be given the sum of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">three rupees for travelling expenses between Galle and Colombo, the cost of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their steamship passages from Colombo to Thursday Island, return passage from <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island to Colombo at the expiry of their term of indenture, and a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">month\u2019s pay in advance. Their wages were to be \u2018twelve rupees per month for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the first twelve months, fifteen rupees per month for the second twelve months <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and 20 rupees per month for the third twelve months\u2019. Each man would be <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">supplied \u2018with the usual food and clothing to the extent of two shirts and two <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pairs of trousers every year\u2019. There were also conditions on their transfer and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">possible repatriation, should they fail to give satisfaction.13 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Colonial Secretary in Ceylon gave his official permission on 22 June, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1882.14 The \u2018Cingalese\u2019 who signed this document were eventually provided<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with berths on board the S.S. Scotland and arrived in Queensland in August of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that year.15 They were the first batch of indentured Sri Lankans to arrive in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland. On 30 August, all the men were transferred with their consent to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the employ of Joseph Tucker, who had established a pearling station on Goode <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island, 8km from Thursday Island. The new agreements were ratified and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">confirmed by the Police Magistrate on Thursday Island, who noted that the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">men had the option of remaining on Thursday Island after the termination of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their contracts, if their work was satisfactory and that was their wish.16 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">This was a period of expansion for the pearling industry, which was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">chronically short of labour. The 1880 Pacific Island Labourers Act and its <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">amendments had signalled to the shellers that they could not rely indefinitely <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on indentured Melanesians and Polynesians as their chief labour source. In<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1881, two events \u2014 passage of the Pearl Shell and Beche-de-Mer Fishery Act <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and discovery of a vast new pearl bed to the south-west of Mabuiag \u2014 also <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">changed the legal and social context of labour procurement. Mindful of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">likely deleterious effects on the Islanders, the Government that year created <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">several reserves for their exclusive use17 and granted officially registered leases <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to selected shellers, for the first time guaranteeing them limited security of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">tenure. These onshore stations, consisting of houses for the manager and men <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and \u2018storehouses for shell, diving gear, provisions, kitchen, etc.\u2019, were the centre <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of operations, where \u2018all stores are kept for the men and boats, all repairs done, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and the shell is received, cleaned, and packed\u2019.18 Men were required to erect the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">buildings, jetties and slipways of the new stations, dig the wells, man the diving <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">boats and clean and pack the shell. Ancillary staff was also required to provision <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and cook for the men, row the whaleboats to and from the stations to Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island and act as house servants for the European owners and managers.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Efficiency demanded a continuing and dependable supply of workmen and, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with the Pacific closed as the primary source of cheap labour, the shellers turned <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their attention to the possibility of mass indenture from Asia. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">In October 1883, the shelling population was concentrated on the islands <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">adjacent to Thursday Island, which, apart from six government buildings, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">comprised merely \u2018two hotels, one store and four private houses\u2019.19 John <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Douglas, who arrived as Government Resident in 1885, is credited with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">encouraging the shellers to move their headquarters from the nearby islands and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">thus increase the township\u2019s population and commercial base.20 Among the 307 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">inhabitants of Thursday Island about 1885, 160 were Asians, including 20 \u2018East <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Indians\u2019, mostly Sri Lankans. Five were crewmen on a British India Company <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">vessel then in port. Of the 15 others, only one is mentioned by name, De Sylva<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(likely James Appu De Silva). Five were storehands working for De Silva; five <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were living in Tommy Japan\u2019s (Tomiji Nakagawa) lodging house and two in Ah <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sue\u2019s lodging house; one was employed by and lodged with Humphrey Davy <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mills, the local boatbuilder; one was working as a storeman in Burns Philp &amp; <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Co.\u2019s Native Barracks; and one was in prison.21 Not recorded in that census, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">however, were Sri Lankans living on islands of the Prince of Wales Group or on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">board their vessels. During 1885, of the 1,144 seamen engaged through the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Shipping Office and the 980 discharged, 75 were Sri Lankans.22 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Despite assertions that the turn-of-the-century population numbered <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">some 100 families, historical evidence does not support this number. The most <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">comprehensive statistics available enumerated marine workers (pearl shell, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">b\u00eache-de-mer and trochus) by ethnicity, but Sri Lankans were too few to<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">warrant a separate category. Table 2.2 (in Chapter Two, this volume) charts the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">decline of the Sri Lankans on Thursday Island from about 1885 to 1914, but <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">those who resided on the nearby stations or on boats were not counted. In 1890,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Sri Lankan Thursday Island population was recorded as 22 males out of a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">total of 526; in 1892, it was 43 out of 1,067; by 1893, it was 32 males out of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1,441; and, in 1898, 40 out of 1,702. By April 1901, there were 54 males (52 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">adults and two children), a figure unchanged a year later when the total <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">population was 1,695.23 This was the heyday of the Thursday Island Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">community, which declined rapidly after Federation in 1901 and a major <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">collapse of the pearling industry in 1904. By 1918, only 12 Sri Lankans were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">living either on Thursday Island or the neighbouring Prince of Wales Group of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">islands.24<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">First Settlers<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Many of the early Sri Lankan indents became \u2018watermen\u2019 (boatmen) and appear to have had a monopoly over that occupation. The pilot station and harbourmaster\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">office were at that time located on Goode Island, a few kilometres away <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">from Thursday Island, and required boatmen for all transport and transhipment <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">between the islands.25 In 1887, the Government established a lazaret and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">quarantine station on Gialag (Friday Island), which, until the former\u2019s closure <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and the latter\u2019s transfer to Thursday Island in 1907, also required boat<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">transport.26 The two Thursday Island jetties were not completed until 1893 and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">all passengers and cargo destined for the port had to be rowed ashore in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">watermen\u2019s skiffs from the hulk, which lay offshore. At Federation, there was a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">permanent customs post on Thursday Island, which was manned at one stage by <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a staff of 28, most of whom were launch crew.27 Whether the watermen worked <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">under government contract or were self-employed, they were relatively well <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">paid and possessed greater independence and opportunity for engaging in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">commercial activity than their indentured countrymen.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island Court of Petty Sessions and Police Summons Books identify <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">some of the first settlers and their circumstances. They fill the gap between the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">first arrivals and the establishment of the earliest small businesses.28 We have <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">tentatively identified about 60 of those early arrivals, who are recorded as being <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of \u2018Cingalese\u2019 origin in Thursday Island court and other records between 1883 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and 1907:29 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ahmat, L. K. Amaris, Simba K. Amadoris, Gostene Waduga Andris <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(George William Andris), Androsami, Allis Appu, Charles Appu<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(possibly K. N. Saris Appu), Dionas Appu, Don Singho Appu (John <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon), Arnolis, Singho Babu (S. K. Babunappu), M. W. Bastian, Peter <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Brown, Assan Ceylon (B. Assan), Usop Ceylon, Charley Cingalese, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Conieham, Cornelius, Danolis, Denishamy, Didwan, Dionysius, Elias, P. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">H. Endoris, Frank Gabriel, J. Harmanis, Idroos, J. P. James, M. W. James, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Billy Jetsunamy (Billy Cingalese), Henry Louis Johannes, Bob Kitchalan, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Peter Kuruneru, Matho (Matthew Appu), Charles Mendis, W. V. Mendis, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Menzies, Miskin, Thomas Roderick Morris, Katta Nandoris, Henry Odiris, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Samuel, Charles De Silva, H. L. De Silva, James Appu De Silva (Jimmy <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Cingalese), S. A. De Silva, William De Silva, Simon,30 Henry Louis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon, L. D Simon, S. K. Simon, K. P. Appu Singho, Punchi Singho <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(James Cingalese), Abdula Siyadoris, Thadeus, Theodorus, L. H. Trolis, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thomas Weerasooria (who also signed as \u2018W. S. Thomas\u2019), William De <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Silva, Bala Williams, H. Wimalaratna.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">To the above list can be added the 10 Sri Lankans who were brought <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">before the court by the pearl-sheller, Edward Morey, for breach of agreement in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">January 1901. The case was adjourned and then withdrawn, presumably because <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the men returned to work. Their names were: John Jayasuriya Gunawardene, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Hatharasingha Widanage Thomis, Widane Gamage Charles, Lamahewage <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Johannes, Ratneweera Patabendige Andrayas, Kukunhenego Matho,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Hewanamage Simon, Don Charles, Adoris, Geedrick.31<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Most of the men were either watermen or crew; i.e., they ranked towards <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the middle of the hierarchy of marine workers in terms of skill level, wages and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">ethnic origin. The majority were Buddhists, some very devout,32 although a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">small number were Muslim, such as Assan Ceylon and Ahmat, and possibly \u2014 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">judging by his name \u2014 Usop Ceylon.33 Many were literate in Sinhalese, could<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">read Buddhist texts and signed their names in Sinhalese script (more rarely in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">English) to their witness statements. When giving evidence in court, they swore <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to tell the truth on their \u2018sacred volume the Cingalese bible\u2019. During their time <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">ashore, they lived at the \u2018Cingalese\u2019 lodging house on Victoria Parade or in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">houses close by, bought provisions at the Sri Lankan store, drank with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">countrymen and other workmates in the local hotels,34 played billiards in the<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43250 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Victoria-Parade-600x385.jpg\" alt=\"Victoria Parade\" width=\"600\" height=\"385\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Victoria Parade, Thursday Island, 1895.<\/span><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Courtesy of John Oxley Library, Brisbane (Item No. 121658).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sri Lankan billiard room, visited their countrymen at home or in the boarding <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">house, and gambled in the Chinese-run establishments. They probably also <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">visited the Yokohama brothels. No Sri Lankan women are mentioned and only <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a few of the men are recorded as being married, although some are known to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">have lived with local Indigenous women and\/or had families in Sri Lanka.35<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">At the apex of the marine-worker hierarchy were the divers, who were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the best paid and most highly respected. They captained their boats, being <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">solely responsible for each trip and answerable only to the owners or <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">managers.36 Sri Lankans were rarely employed as divers, but we have found <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">evidence of two: Assan Ceylon and Thomas Morris.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Assan Ceylon began diving for pearl shell about 1879 and worked as a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">diver for more than 20 years. In 1901, he was employed by the Filipino pearlsheller <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and businessman, Heriberto Zarcal, as diver and captain of his ketch <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lacandola. Although generally known as Assan Ceylon, he was registered on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">articles of the schooner Ethel and other boats as B. Assan, No. 179. He was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">found to be partly responsible for the death of Cypriano Trinidad, one of the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Filipino crew of the Lacandola, in that he had allowed Trinidad to dive without <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a diver\u2019s licence, and was fined the large sum of \u00a310.15.6.37 Two years later, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Victoria Parade, Thursday Island, 1895.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Courtesy of John Oxley Library, Brisbane (Item No. 121658). <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">perhaps because of his conviction or because he had sustained an injury to his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">hand, he was working as a commercial fisherman in partnership with Henry <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Louis Simon.38 Thomas Roderick Morris, born in Badulla, Ceylon, about 1863, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">may have been of European-Asian descent. His parents are recorded as James <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Morris, a coffee planter, and Caroline. In 1890, he was working as a diver for the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pearl-sheller, John Tolman;39 and, on 31 January, 1891, he gave his occupation <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">as diver when he married a mainland Aboriginal woman from Cape Grenville <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">named Kate Paremah.40 Another putative Sri Lankan diver was Yusuf (a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Muslim known locally as John Joseph Bombay), who was in charge of the Lily in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1885.41<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">With few exceptions, little is known about the fate of most of these early <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">seamen. Simon Silva, a man \u2018of an excitable nature\u2019, was likely the coxswain of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the first transport between Thursday and Goode Island in 1884.42 At the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">outbreak of World War I, Simon was listed as the only \u2018Coloured\u2019 man on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island possessing a service rifle.43 He survived to become the oldest <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">man on the island.44 According to Amara and Mahendra Mendis, who knew <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">him towards the end of his life, he used to live behind the Saranealis family, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">who cooked his meals as he grew older and more infirm and gave him fish after <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their fishing trips. His last years were spent in hospital, where his friend, the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">doctor, provided him with a glass of whisky after their evening walk together.45 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Three long-term residents died intestate on Thursday Island: Allis Appu in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1891, leaving the sum of \u00a3103.3.4;46 Gostene Waduga Andris in 1900, leaving<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">an estate of \u00a360;47 and M. V. Mendis in 1913, leaving assets of \u00a35.12.6.48 James <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">De Silva and Simon Silva appear to have become indigent in old age. The <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">waterman, Miskin, who was often in trouble with the law, was born about 1853 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and may have been one of the original indents. He died on Thursday Island on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">31 July, 1908.49 At least three Sri Lankans required hospitalisation due to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">temporary mental illness.50<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The \u2018Cingalese Quarter\u2019 of Thursday Island <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">To cater for the needs of the growing Sri Lankan workforce, a \u2018Cingalese <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">boarding house\u2019 was established, probably during the second half of 1885. It was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">run by James Appu De Silva.51 James De Silva was the proprietor, not only of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the boarding house but of a billiard room that was under the same roof and was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">joined to the boarding house by a verandah.52 He employed his countryman, a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">former waterman named Andris, as a billiard marker. By April 1886, he also ran <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a \u2018Cingalese store\u2019 on the same allotment.53 Close by was the house which the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sri Lankans used as a place of worship before the construction and dedication of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018a tiny tin Buddhist temple\u2019. For many years, the temple, \u2018an equally small <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">168 Navigating Boundaries <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Chinese Joss house\u2019 and two Christian churches were the only places of worship <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on the island.54<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The section of Thursday Island where the Sri Lankans congregated was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">referred to as the \u2018Cingalese quarter\u2019. It consisted of a cluster of buildings on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Allotments 1 and 2 of Section 5 of the town plan towards the eastern end of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Victoria Parade near the Post Office, separate from the Asian quarters (see Map <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">C).55 This was the locus of their community, a predominantly masculine world <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of work, recreation and prayer. It was centred on their lodging house, billiard <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">room, store and Buddhist temple and included at least three houses, two located <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in a passage from Victoria Parade to Douglas Street and the other fronting on to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Victoria Parade.56 However, neither the Sri Lankans (nor other \u2018Coloured <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">aliens\u2019) owned the buildings or land they occupied. Property on Thursday Island <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">at the time was exclusively in the hands of Europeans: the boarding house, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">billiard room, store and houses belonged to Burns Philp &amp; Co. Once a Sri Lankan house tenant left, however, he generally found a countryman to take his place.57<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The tendency of the Sri Lankans to work and live together, to exploit a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">specialised economic niche in the local economy and to behave as a cohesive <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">ethnic group in the event of disturbances conforms to the general pattern of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island Asian communities during their early formation. To these <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">factors can be added the Sri Lankans\u2019 \u2018exotic\u2019 (to European eyes) appearance, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">apparel and general demeanour. Although they kept largely to themselves, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">there were occasional fights with their main economic competitors, the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Malays,58 and later the Japanese.59 Each side accused the other of being the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">instigator of these affrays, but the police considered them equally to blame.60 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">More covert was Sri Lankan participation in the shadowy world of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Malaytown\u2019s gambling and opium dens and brothels. These semi-legal <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">establishments were frequented by seamen of all ethnicities during the lay-up <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">season and remained largely free from official supervision and control provided <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">there were no disturbances. From time to time, however, the police would <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">conduct raids, usually with the help of informers. In 1899, the seaman, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Siyadoris, was one of a group of Sir Lankans gambling with Malays and Chinese <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in Hop Sing\u2019s back shop in Douglas Street;61 in 1901, H. L. Simon was arrested <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in a police raid against William Sam Hee\u2019s gambling room on Douglas Street.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">He had been one of a \u2018crowd\u2019 of about 25 men, including Europeans, Japanese, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Chinese, Malays and three of his countrymen \u2014 one was the waterman, Bala <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Williams, another the hawker, Weerasooria Thomas.62 This world was depicted <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">by novelist Colin Simpson, who based his fictionalised hero\u2019s adventures on his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">own experiences on Thursday Island during the early 1890s. Recalling his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">impressions of a Chinese-run gambling room, he wrote:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island 169 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">A few of the men there he knew. The big Dane was Ewald, who had a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">beche-de-mer fishery. The West Indian with thin gold rings in his ears was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the bosun of Pymont\u2019s luggers. Kono, the \u2018king\u2019 Jap diver who had brought <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in the biggest shell-take the previous season, was at the table \u2026 De Silva, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the little Cingalese storekeeper, was at the gaming table between an old <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Chinese and a red-bearded engineer named McGowan, who was working <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on the construction of the new jetty.63<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The early community gained an unknown number of new members in July 1888 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">as a result of the influx of 84 refugees from anti-Asian riots in the remote <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">township of Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The riots had broken out <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in response to three murders by a \u2018Malay\u2019 named Sedin, but they brought to a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">head several years of tension between the Asian newcomers and the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">predominantly European townspeople, which was fanned by articles in the local <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">press.64 The majority of those involved were \u2018Malays\u2019, a general term for<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Coloured\u2019 people, but Sri Lankans were included among those who fled to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island in the vessel, Birksgate.65 In an article headed \u2018The Normanton <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">disturbances\u2019, the Queenslander of 7 July, 1888, reported that:<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sedin, a Malay, was charged yesterday week at Normanton for the murder <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of John Fitzgerald and Christian Muynga. He insisted on describing how <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the murders were committed. He was committed to stand trial for wilful<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">murder. He was also charged with the murder of J. P. O. Davis. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The \u2018Malays\u2019 and Sri Lankans had reportedly \u2018dribbled down in twos and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">threes\u2019 from Thursday Island over a number of years, hence the decision to send <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">them back there. On a lagoon near the town they had constructed their own <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">village and some had gone into service as cooks and house servants. Their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">presence was increasingly resented and the climax came with the murder by<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sedin of three Europeans, two of whom may have gone to the Malay village to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cause trouble, but one, a ship\u2019s carpenter, seeking to make peace.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Immediately the townspeople decided on direct action. With strong ropes <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">they pulled down every structure in Malaytown. The terrified Malays fled <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to the bush, but about one hundred of them were captured and put on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">board the sailing ship Rapido.66<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Reports of the happenings in Normanton eventually filtered through to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon and evoked a storm of indignation, which found an echo in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland. The 12 October, 1888, issue of the Queenslander contained the following article, datelined Thursday Island and headed \u2018The deported [sic]<br \/>\nCingalese\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">A letter from Louis Mendis, a leading Cingalese resident of Colombo, has been received by a Cingalese man here, who came away from Normanton with the other coloured deportees in June last year. Mendis says he will spare no pains to get justice done for the men through the Ceylon Government; he will get all the papers necessary to back him in his efforts; he will get the Cingalese representatives in the Legislative Council to move in the matter in the Council, and he will do all in his power to obtain redress. Mendis asks to be supplied with full information concerning the case, and also newspapers containing the narrative or comments thereon; and he offers to be responsible personally for all expenses incurred in keeping up the correspondence, which he says will have to be pursued until something is done for his countrymen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Whether Louis Mendis\u2019s efforts bore any fruit is not known, since the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">newspapers remained silent on the subject.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Contemporary Observations<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Despite their relatively small numbers, the Sri Lankans were singled out for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">comment from the beginning. In an 1883 petition to the Colonial Secretary of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland, the Torres Strait pearl-shellers wrote that \u2018Arabs, Egyptians, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Malays and Macassar men, Javanese, Cingalese, West Indies, and natives from <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">almost every island in the South Pacific\u2019 were employed in the marine <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">industries.67 At the end of the next year, they complained that they were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018continually engaging men from Sydney, Brisbane, Singapore, Batavia, Ceylon <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and Japan for various terms; and at the highest port wages; paying all expenses, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and passage here, and frequently home again\u2019, only to see their employees <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">fleeced by others at no profit to themselves.68<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Church of England priest, Thomas Eykyn, who began visiting <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island in 1885, specifically mentioned \u2018Hindoos, Cingalese, Malays, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Siamese, Javanese, Japanese, Poles, Irish, Scotch, and a few English and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Germans\u2019 among its \u201832 different nationalities\u2019.69 The Moravian missionaries <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">established Mapoon Mission as a refuge for Cape York Aboriginal people in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1891 to protect the men and women from abduction by \u2018Whites, Malays, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Cingalese, Japanese, and Manilla men\u2019.70 Visiting Thursday Island in 1892, the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">painter, Ellis Rowan, was struck by the \u2018medley of tongues and faces\u2019 belonging <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to \u2018Britons, Italians, Spaniards, Maltese, Hindus, Cingalese, Negroes, Malays, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Kanakas\u2019;71 and, according to a visiting Sydney journalist, who attended a local <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island 171 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">theatrical production in 1899, the audience included \u2018Cingalese \u2026 mostly in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cool garb of singlet and dungaree trousers\u2019.72 The growing commercial success of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Sri Lankans and other non-Europeans infuriated their Anglo-Australian <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business competitors, one of whom penned the following verses about 1900:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Up in regions equatorial,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Blest with scenery pictorial,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Pursuits mainly piscatorial,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lies an island known to fame.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Pearling lives and pearling thrives there,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Coloured races live in hives there,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">White men risk their lives there<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island is its name.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Every race it opes its gates to,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Every country it relates to,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Key to Hell and Torres Straits too,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Though a speck upon the map.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">What though whites first trod upon it!<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">What though Anglo-Saxons won it!<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Chows and Cingalese now run it,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Aided by the wily Jap.73<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">From Indents to Entrepreneurs<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The beginnings of commercial activity among the Sri Lankans occurred soon <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">after the arrival of the first indentured workers. The earliest entrepreneurs were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">two watermen, James De Silva and Henry Louis Simon. By 1885, the energetic <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">De Silva was the proprietor of a newly constructed lodging house, to which, by <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1888, he had added a billiard room and general store. He advertised his various <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">services in the first issue of the Torres Straits Pilot and New Guinea Gazette on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">2 January, 1888: \u2018James Silva, General Storekeeper, Boarding House Keeper <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and Waterman, Victoria Parade, Thursday Island.\u2019 Silva offered \u2018good <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">accommodation for boarders at lowest rates\u2019 and \u2018boats for hire at all hours\u2019. In <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the same issue was an advertisement for De Silva\u2019s business competitor, H. L. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon of Victoria Parade, who, in addition to his stock of \u2018Ceylon Curios\u2019, also <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">kept \u2018boats for hire at any time of day or night\u2019. Other licensed watermen <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">followed their example in hiring out their boats and services: M. W. Bastian in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1889;74 J. Harmanis from 1889\u201399;75 Saris Appu and J. Hermanis in 1898;76 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ahmat from 1892\u201399;77 and J. P. James, who, in January 1902, had a boatshed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">near the Grand Hotel.78 All had lived for some time on Thursday Island; some<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">may have been among the original indents. Becoming boat-owners was a<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43255 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Saranealis-family-graves-600x387.jpg\" alt=\"Saranealis family graves\" width=\"600\" height=\"387\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px; color: #000000;\"><strong>Saranealis family graves, Thursday Island.<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 16px; color: #000000;\"><strong>Courtesy of Stanley J. Sparkes.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">natural progression for thrifty boatmen, who had saved enough out of their<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">wages to start their own boat-hire businesses.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Buoyed by their successes, De Silva and Simon expanded into other <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">commercial ventures, notably the burgeoning tourist trade in jewellery and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">curios.79 In 1888, James de Silva was one of several Sri Lankans recorded as <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">having been granted a hawker\u2019s licence. In his application, he listed as his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">sureties Henry Dubbins (a European pearl-sheller then Chairman of the Torres <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Divisional Board and a Justice of the Peace) and Moyden (a Muslim Indian <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">waterman from Madras).80 This suggests he had begun to establish personal and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business contacts beyond the confines of the Sri Lankan community. In 1890, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">he married May Scott Mosa, a local shopkeeper, and with her help continued to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">expand his business interests. That same year he advertised himself as a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">blacksmith81 and, in August 1891, he kept at least two shops, one of which he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">sub-leased to a Greek storekeeper, George Machal.82 By May 1892, he had <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">become a pearl-sheller, purchasing the lugger, Mobiag, and employing as his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">agent the European, Patrick Joseph Doyle. On 20 July, 1892, he successfully <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">sued William Price for refusing to go to sea in his boat, despite the latter\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">having signed on articles and received an advance of \u00a35. De Silva testified that <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">not only had he lost the money he had advanced to Price, but two or three days\u2019<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">time, the cost of which he estimated at \u2018about one pound per day\u2019.82 It was<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis family graves, Thursday Island.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Courtesy of Stanley J. Sparkes.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">during this difficult time that he was brought before the court, convicted of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">obscene language, required to provide sureties of the peace for six months at a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">total of \u00a350 and fined \u00a36.10.6. Despite this setback, he continued as a pearlsheller <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">until at least January 1895.84 He had, however, withdrawn from pearling <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">by September 1900 when he gave his occupation as fisherman during his trial <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">for disorderly conduct. He had gone to Esteban Filomeno\u2019s house to get money <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">owing to him for fish, had been roughly treated by a group of Filipinos, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Filomeno\u2019s countrymen, and reacted by shouting and throwing stones.85 The <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">next month he was charged with being mentally unsound, but was released <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">almost immediately.86 De Silva remained on Thursday Island at least into the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1920s: in 1927, he was twice convicted of refusing to vacate premises he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">occupied on Arthur Filewood\u2019s property.87 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Henry Louis Simon\u2019s career followed a similar trajectory. On 15 January, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1885, he married a European woman, Annie May Holmes, and they rented a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">house close to Odiris and Theodorus.88 On 12 May, 1888, Annie complained to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the court about the actions of James De Silva, her husband\u2019s business rival.89 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Both men advertised boats for hire from 1888 and, in 1888\u201389, both held<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">billiard licences for one table each, located in premises on Victoria Parade <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(presumably the billiard room run by James De Silva until 1896).90 Simon did <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">not renew his billiard licence after 1889, the year he advertised a jewellery <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">partnership with P. H. Endoris.91 In 1892, he was granted a licence to deal in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pearls (one of two held by Sri Lankans and which he held until at least 1896), a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">hawker\u2019s licence and a pawnbroker\u2019s licence.92 In 1893 and 1894, he advertised <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">his services as a jeweller and watchmaker.93 In October 1901, however, Simon<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was arrested and fined for gambling illegally with a group of his countrymen in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">William Sam Hee\u2019s room on Douglas Street.94 Since only men of the highest <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">probity were permitted to hold licences to deal in pearls, his gambling <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">conviction may have precluded him from renewing his licence. By 1903, he, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">like De Silva, was working as a licensed commercial fisherman in partnership <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with the ex-diver, Assan Ceylon,95 and thereafter disappears from the historical <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">record.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">James De Silva may have been the first Sri Lankan to have been granted a hawker\u2019s licence (in 1888), but he was followed shortly thereafter by H. L. De <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Silva in 1889 and K. M. Saris Appu in 1890. The next year, Odiris gave <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">evidence that he, too, was a licensed hawker with \u2018money and jewels\u2019; and H. L. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon followed in 1892.96 They may have been among the Sri Lankans who <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">rowed out to visiting passenger steamships and were described by Boothby <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">during his visit to Thursday Island in December 1892: <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">No sooner are we at anchor than our decks are covered with strangers of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">all descriptions. Arabs, Chinese, Cinghalese, Japanese etc. clamber over <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the side, everyone with something to sell, and everyone with a tremendous<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">amount to say.97 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Boothby cast a cynical eye over the sale of \u2018pearls\u2019 to unwary tourists:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">For even this self-same tourist, so ignorant in other matters, knows that it <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">is not wise to buy pearls from the smooth-spoken Cinghalese who crowd <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the ship\u2019s deck. To this end these simple children of fair Ceylon <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">manufacture pearls that would deceive even the mother oyster herself and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">dispose of them on advantageous terms to their darker skinned brethren.98<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">From the mid-1890s, coinciding with a general downturn in the Torres <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Strait marine industries, the completion of the Thursday Island jetty, the ageing <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of the original watermen and the community\u2019s fears about the consequences of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Federation, we see a greater range of occupations embraced by the remaining <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">members of the Sri Lankan community. For example, in 1895, George William <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Andris was working as a carpenter; and, in 1899, Simba K. Amadoris (who was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to become a jeweller and business rival of Y. B. Saranealis) was employed at <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Brown Campbells store on Thursday Island; in 1906, Henry Louis Johannes was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a general labourer.99 Shortly after Federation, a few of the older men, former<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">watermen who had chosen to remain on the island, took out commercial <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">fishermen\u2019s licences from the Shipping Inspector. Demand for their previous <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">services had all but ceased and, with declining physical strength, they no doubt <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">sought to take advantage of their long experience of local currents and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">conditions, selling their catch from Thursday Island. Among ex-watermen and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">ex-seamen recorded as licensed fishermen carrying on business on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island were Matthew Appu, Assan Ceylon, Miskin, James De Silva, S. K.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon and Henry Louis Simon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Leaving aside the gem traders discussed below, various other small <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">entrepreneurs appeared from time to time on Thursday Island, some setting up on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their own and others buying established businesses. On 27 June, 1901, H. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Fernando put the following advertisement in the Pilot: \u2018I, the undersigned, have <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">this day disposed of my business as a laundryman carried on in Douglas Street to P. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">H. James on whose behalf I solicit the patronage of the public of Thursday Island.\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The advertisement was repeated for some weeks. A few years later, the Queensland <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Oriental Trading Co., General Merchants, Douglas Street, began to advertise<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Sinha Tea\u2019 among a list of other groceries. They stated they were \u2018importers of Best <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon Tea, Hand-made Ceylon Lace, Curios etc\u2019.100 A mail-order entrepreneur <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">appeared briefly on the scene in 1907. The following advertisement appeared in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Pilot on 14 February, 1907, and was repeated on 14 March:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon Precious Stones. Direct from the Gemming District to Jewellery <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Manufacturers. Sample packet of 100 Cut Stones, Rubies, Sapphires, Etc., <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u00a35.0.0. Send P.O. Money Order to J. Wickramanayaka &amp; Co., Kalutara, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon, and try a packet, it will lead to good business. Best references. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">What other goods do you require from Ceylon?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Gem-Trading Enterprises<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">All local memory of the first Sri Lankan settlers has been lost, but the gem-trading <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">enterprises, established during the closing years of the 19th century, remain part of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the island\u2019s historical record. Commerce in pearls (genuine and manufactured) <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">became the main stimulus for a \u2018second wave\u2019 of Sri Lankan migrants to Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island. The first indents, some of whom had already entered the gem trade as <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">hawkers and pearl dealers, were joined by the professional jewellers and gem <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">dealers who are remembered today. They were part of a move by Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">jewellers to seek outlets in ports abroad, which were visited regularly by passenger <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">vessels. The new arrivals exploited the profitable middleman trade in jewellery, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">particularly pearls, pearl blisters and items manufactured from pearl shell for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">which Thursday Island was famous. It was a natural commercial target for Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lankan jewellers whose expertise already embraced pearls from the beds of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Gulf of Mannar. According to Swan, several of these men were sponsored by <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mudaliyar B. P. De Silva, \u2018a well-known entrepreneur in the gem trade in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon\u2019.101 Moreover, those who could afford to returned home periodically and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their success stories encouraged others to try their luck on the same turf.102 This <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018second wave\u2019 contributed to the more complex ethnic specialisation that was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">emerging within the marine industries. By the 1920s, observers noted that there <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were \u2018Japanese agents for trochus shell, Chinese agents for b\u00eache-de-mer and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Cingalese who specialise in tortoiseshell\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Most of the stores were mixed businesses, offering services as watch and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">clock repairers and jewellery manufacturers, along with all manner of imported <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and locally fabricated curios made from pearl shell and tortoise shell \u2014 spoons, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pen handles, paper knives, necklaces, pendants, bracelets and watch cases \u2014 as <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">well as Ceylon tea, Parker pens, gas lighters and lottery tickets.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The first of these stores to be recorded was opened on Victoria Parade <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">during the late 1880s by the enterprising waterman and boat owner, Henry <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Louis Simon. In January 1888, he advertised a second trade as \u2018Practical <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Jeweller and Goldsmith\u2019 and \u2018Dealer in Ceylon Curios and Jewellery\u2019. He <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">formed a partnership with P. H. Endoris, which was advertised between 1889 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and 1893.104 By 1890, Simon and W. E. Wimalasundera operated jewellery <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">stores on Victoria Parade.105 Two years later, Simon was so well established, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">professionally and personally, that he had obtained one of the seven licences to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">deal in pearls \u2014 licences that were issued at the discretion of the Police <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Magistrate of Thursday Island only to \u2018reputable persons\u2019.106 Also in 1892, S. A. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">De Silva advertised himself as a jeweller and watchmaker with an establishment <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in Normanby Street. He continued to advertise his services, which grew to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">include a \u2018manufacturing department\u2019 for customers wishing to design or alter<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their own jewellery, until 1897.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">H. L. De Silva, the second licence holder in 1892, became successful <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">enough to employ a second jeweller, his countryman Deeris, who was possibly, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">like many others throughout that period, brought out under indenture.108 L. D. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon also briefly advertised himself as a jeweller and goldsmith from <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1895\u201396;109 and Y. B. Saranealis carried on a jewellery business in Normanby <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Street from 1896\u20131919.110 Towards the end of 1900, J. C. Amadoris opened a<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">similar business, also in Normanby Street, under the name, James Charles; and, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">about the same time, Simba K. Amadoris (who had been employed at Brown <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Campbells store on Thursday Island in 1899) set up in business as a jeweller and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">watchmaker. He purchased the business of Y. B. Saranealis in 1900 after the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">latter\u2019s bankruptcy, but they later became rivals. Amadoris was periodically in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">trouble with the law and, in 1900, was convicted of manslaughter. After serving <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">his jail sentence, he returned to Thursday Island and went into partnership with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">H. L. Mowlis. On 13 October, 1906, Amadoris described himself as a pearl<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">dealer and jeweller with a shop in Douglas Street; in 1908, he appears to have <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">transferred his pearl dealer\u2019s licence to Mowlis, but nothing is recorded about <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that association after 1915.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Major Gem Traders: Saranealis, Charles, Mowlis and Mendis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">In 1896, the young Yanandaygoda Buddalegay De Costa Saranealis arrived on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island and immediately set himself up as a jeweller and watchmaker <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in premises in Normanby Street.111 Announcing that he had commenced <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business, Saranealis advertised himself as a \u2018Pearl Merchant and Buyer, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Watchmaker and Manufacturing Jeweller \u2026 prepared to execute every <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">description of work entrusted to him\u2019. He added that he kept a \u2018large stock of all <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">kinds of precious stones and jewellery\u2019, manufactured every description of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">jewellery to order and repaired watches and clocks.112 On 31 March, 1897, he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was fined 5\/- for a minor breach of local by-laws, probably in connection with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">his business.113 In the 7 January, 1899, issue of the Pilot, Saranealis advertised <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that he was now a licensed pearl dealer and court records reveal that in April of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that year he was sworn in as court interpreter, a sign of his high standing in the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">general community.114 His advertisements continued throughout 1899, but he<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was declared bankrupt on 6 December, 1899, with debts of \u00a3374.11.10 and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">assets of only \u00a3231.6.115 He sold his business to his countryman, S. K. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris, in 1900 but was soon back in business. On 10 December, 1903, he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">advertised the availability of \u2018Ceylon Lace and Precious Stones, Watches and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Jewellery\u2019 for sale. On 26 December, 1903, he advertised again, stating \u2018New <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and Expensive Machinery for Electroplating and Gilding has been received and<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">all orders can be completed equal to the best English and Continental work\u2019.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">After the disastrous fire, which, in April 1905, destroyed 14 buildings on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island\u2019s main commercial block, most of the Sri Lankan shopkeepers, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis among them, moved to Douglas Street. By 30 September, 1905, he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was back in business: in addition to his normal weekly advertisement on the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">front page of the Pilot, he advertised that he was still prepared to buy and clean <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pearls as usual. On 13 October, 1906, just four days before an assault by<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris, Saranealis advertised the arrival of a consignment of Ceylon lace. In <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1909, in the issue of 26 June, Saranealis added to his regular advertisement with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">an Australian coat-of-arms and the words \u2018Under the Patronage of His <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Excellency the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, Lord <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Northcote\u2019. He kept Lord Northcote\u2019s patronage until at least 1913.116 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis continued as a pearl buyer and cleaner, watchmaker and jeweller<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">until his death in 1919, when his widow and sons took over the business.117 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">On 29 December, 1900, James Charles (formerly James Charles <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris) advertised his services as watchmaker, jeweller and engraver with a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">shop in Normanby Street, which he may have taken over from S. K. Amadoris <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">during his term of imprisonment.118 He claimed to be well known in many <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">places in Australia. On 12 January, 1901, Charles\u2019s regular advertisement began <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">appearing on the front page of the Pilot and continued to do so for some years.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">He married Florence Elizabeth Murton on 6 July, 1902, and, by 1903, had <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">moved his jewellery establishment to Douglas Street.119 He and Y. B. Saranealis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were the only Sri Lankans to hold any of the nine pearl dealer\u2019s licences issued <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">for 1907.120 He ceased advertising in 1909 after an attempt on his life and may <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">have left Thursday Island.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Hikkadawa Leana Mowlis, also from Galle, arrived on Thursday Island in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the early 1900s. He established a jewellery business in partnership with S. K. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris, after the latter\u2019s release from jail, and, in 1908, held a coveted<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">licence to deal in pearls. On 19 June, 1909, the following advertisement<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">appeared in the Pilot: \u2018Amadoris and Mowlis, Pearl Dealers and Manufacturing<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Jewellers. Splendid Assortment of Ceylon Lace Received.\u2019 On 1 February, 1913,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mowlis advertised in The Parish Gazette without mentioning Amadoris and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">again failed to mention Amadoris in his advertisement in the Pilot of 24 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">January, 1914:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43257 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Punchi-Hewa-Mendis-321x400.jpg\" alt=\"Punchi Hewa Mendis\" width=\"321\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Punchi Hewa Mendis, c.1950s.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Courtesy of Mahendra Mendis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">H. L. Mowlis. Pearl Merchant &amp; Manufacturer of Mother-of- <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Pearl Goods, Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island. Having acquired <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">from Mr. H[eriberto] <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Zarcal his business with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">stock-in-trade etc., at <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island, H. L. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mowlis will now continue <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the business in his own <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">name. The fine selection <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of pearl and pearl-shell <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">goods, jewellery, watches <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and other time-pieces, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">electroplate ware etc.,will be kept up to the present high standard; and my usual fine stocks<br \/>\nof Ceylon Lace will be added to, and satisfaction to all patrons so guaranteed, prices also<br \/>\nbeing most moderate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">In 1915, however, Amadoris and Mowlis advertised together as pearl <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cleaners, an indication that the partnership had been reconstituted at least for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that year.121 That is the last year in which Amadoris\u2019s name appears. Mowlis, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">however, continued to advertise annually in Pugh\u2019s Almanac as a pearl buyer, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">watchmaker and jeweller until 1923.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The most successful of all the gem traders was Mendis Punchihewa, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">known in Australia as P. H. (Punchi Hewa) Mendis. Mendis came to Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island in 1898 as a 15-year-old boy, sponsored by his father\u2019s cousin, Mendis De <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Silva, who had apparently lived there for a time.122 Mendis found employment <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with the Pilot as a compositor and part-time reporter \u2014 later in life, he recalled <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">delivering the newspaper to Hon. John Douglas and sometimes receiving an <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">apple in return. Beginning as a retailer in small rented premises, by good luck he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">made a large profit from the sale of an exceptionally beautiful pearl. This gave <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">him the start-up capital to purchase a larger shop on Douglas Street opposite <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Metropole Hotel in 1905 from the Chinese businessman, See Kee. There he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">opened a jewellery and general store and, within a few years, had established <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">himself as an importer and retailer and a leading businessman in the town.123<br \/>\nOn 24 January, 1914, Mendis, describing himself as a licensed pearl merchant, advertised in the Pilot \u2018to purchase Pearl Blisters in the rough in any quantity for cash. Highest prices given. Pearlshellers please note.\u2019 He placed another, larger advertisement in the same issue, enumerating a wide range of goods for sale: Oriental Embroidery Work \u2026 also Silk and Crepe Kimonos, Silk and Emboidered Jackets, Silk, Gauze and Muslin Blouse Lengths \u2026 Silk Stockings. Hand-painted velvet Cushion Covers, Silk Fans, etc. A large variety of Antimony Picture Frames, Hair Brushes, Mirrors, Shaving Sets, Trinket Boxes, Inkstands, etc., and a quantity of Damasceine, Cloisonne and Satsum, Hatpins, Buckles, Tiepins, Sleeve Links, Vest and Coat Buttons, Cigarette Cases \u2026 Painted Postcards, Visiting Cards. Mendis was quick to see business opportunities and astute and courageous enough to seize them. Alexander Corran, whose father had been a printer, taught him the printer\u2019s craft124 and, during the 1920s, he and Corran\u2019s wife (the owner of the Pilot) operated the only printery on the island, running off not only the Pilot, The Carpentarian and The Parish Gazette for the Diocese of Carpentaria, but community announcements and items of local interest.125 He claimed to have pioneered the trochus export trade from Thursday Island. In<br \/>\nresponse to a request from his brother-in-law, then living in Japan, he sent a shipment of trochus and they began to organise the trade on a regular and systematic basis: it was soon taken over by the Japanese. As he expanded his various enterprises, Mendis brought several members of his extended family to work for him in his various businesses on Thursday Island and, later in Darwin and Brisbane, continuing a long-established practice in the Sri Lankan gem trade. The family also conducted a wholesale and retail business, Galle Stores Ltd, in Sri Lanka.126 In 1940, Mendis left for Darwin to set up another store, later moving to Brisbane for the duration of the war. Returning to Thursday Island at war\u2019s end, he re-established his business on the same street but closer to the Post Office and, by the end of 1949, he owned jewellery stores on Thursday Island, in Darwin and Brisbane. His gem and pearl buying operations on behalf of American interests alone were \u2018said to run to \u00a3100,000 per<br \/>\nannum\u2019.127 By the early 1950s, he was reported to own most of the Douglas Street business centre, and operated \u2018two cafes, one radio-shop, a jewellery-shop and pearl-shell packing houses\u2019. The business was to pass into other hands in 1978 and, soon afterwards, the death of Donsiman Saranealis, who ran the only other jewellery store on the island, brought to an end the era of the Sri Lankan gem-trading enterprises of Thursday Island.128<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sri Lankans and the Law<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Our corpus of legal data is inherently biased, dealing as it does with instances of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">law-breaking. However, it contains much incidental detail that allows us to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">present a more nuanced account than previously of the lives and dealings of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">particular individuals and their interaction with the wider community. It attests <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to a number of convictions for assault and petty theft by a minority of Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lankans, usually against their countrymen and usually as a result of personal <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and commercial rivalries. Disputes about money figure prominently as a source <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of conflict, as does drunkenness, disorderly conduct and abusive language. Yet<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">this should not surprise us: like other Asian communities on Thursday Island, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">self-preservation and even survival required the Sri Lankans to cultivate <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">reciprocal relationships with their countrymen. As members of an \u2018exotic\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">minority, the Sri Lankans were tolerated rather than accepted, despite their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contribution to the local economic, social and cultural life.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Our overall impression is that the Sri Lankan community was no more <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and no less law-abiding than others. Certainly, it was never singled out by the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">authorities as particularly violent or uncontrollable (as others were on occasion).<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Indeed, despite its frontier reputation, Thursday Island\u2019s prisoners consisted <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">almost entirely of men sentenced for offences such as drunkenness, obscene <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">language and otherwis disturbing the peace, petty theft and \u2018continued wilful <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">disobedience\u2019, i.e., refusal to obey an employer\u2019s \u2018lawful commands\u2019. The offences <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">committed were generally minor and intra-ethnic, the result of tensions among <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">men living in close proximity to one another on a small island. A few involved <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">inter-ethnic assaults, usually fights between rival groups of seamen during the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">monsoon lay-up times, when the water was too \u2018dirty\u2019 for diving and the men <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">returned to Thursday Island to drink, gamble and visit the brothels.129 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Criminal cases were rare. One involved three Sri Lankans, who, in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">October 1885, were charged with robbery with violence against an elderly <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Singaporean, Mehemet Ali, who \u2018was left a cripple, almost blind, and very <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">feeble\u2019 and was repatriated to Singapore. The men were held in custody for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">three months, but discharged due to lack of substantial proof.130 Five years later, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Pilot of 21 July, 1900, reported that Aboo Bacca, an Indian migrant from <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simla, had been murdered by gunshot and two Sri Lankans had been arrested in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">connection with the murder. The men, S. K. Amadoris and Peter Kuruneru, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were tried in Cooktown on 5 October, 1900, and found guilty of manslaughter.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Each received a sentence of seven years\u2019 imprisonment.131 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Four early immigrants account for a disproportionate number of court <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cases: Miskin, Billy Jetsunamy, Simon Silva and S. K. Amadoris. The waterman, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Miskin, was often the instigator and ringleader of fights with Malays and served <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">various prison terms between 1890 and 1903 for fighting and petty theft.132 The <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">seaman, Billy Jetsunamy, was charged with increasingly serious felonies between <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1901 and 1903 and was said to \u2018all the time make row\u2019 (be very quarrelsome). <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">On 13 July, 1901, he was found guilty of refusing to join his ship and sentenced <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to four weeks\u2019 imprisonment. On 21 September, he was charged with being <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">armed with an offensive weapon with intent to commit a felony. Evidence was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">given that he had come to Kate Samuels\u2019 house and used abusive language. He <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was found guilty and sentenced to six months\u2019 imprisonment with hard labour.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Two years later, on 27 October, 1903, Billy pleaded guilty to \u2018being armed with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">axe intent to commit a felony\u2019 against his countryman, waterman Punchi <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Singho, and served another prison term.133 The \u2018excitable\u2019 Simon Silva was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">convicted on a number of disorderly conduct offences and for selling alcohol to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Aboriginals\u2019; and S. K. Amadoris was charged with several assaults before his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">conviction for manslaughter.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The court data confirm the existence of a social status distinction<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">between the watermen and seamen, who committed most of the minor offences, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and the small businessmen, who served as interpreters during the 1880s and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1890s. Interpreters were rarely needed after that: the jewellers who comprised <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the \u2018second wave\u2019 of Sri Lankan immigrants were not only more temperate in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">their behaviour but spoke and wrote good English, the medium of education in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Ceylon. They were also required by law to keep their books in English for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">inspection by local authorities.134 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Most of the lawsuits during the early years of the 20th century involved <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">members of the gem-trading fraternity and sprang from interlaced personal and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">commercial rivalries. In February 1902, J. P. James, a jeweller living in Douglas <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Street, was called on to show cause why he should not be bound over to keep the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">peace towards K. P. Appu Singho.135 J. P. Charles was bound over to keep the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">peace towards H. Wimalaratna and, on the next Friday, H. L. Simon was similarly <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">bound over.136 The next year, on 14 December, 1903, Charles was arrested and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">taken to prison. The next day he pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in Douglas Street.137 Four days later, Florence Charles appeared in court <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">demanding sureties of the peace against H. L. Simon for threatening her. She gave<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">evidence that on the night of her husband\u2019s arrest, H. L. Simon had knocked on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the door of their house in Douglas Street saying that he wanted <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to take care of the jewellery as a relation of my husband. He wanted to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">come into the shop and said if I did not give him the jewellery he would<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">force me to. He persisted in trying to get into the shop. He said he would <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">force his way into the shop if I didn\u2019t let him come. I was frightened as <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">I was alone. I was afraid he might do something to me or injure the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">premises.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Simon returned with four of his countrymen at 3am and tried the back<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">door, but Florence threatened to shoot him if he came in.138<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">A little more than a year later, on 21 March, 1905, Y. B. Saranealis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">brought a successful action against Charles De Silva for sureties of the peace. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The dispute involved two (presumably threatening) letters written by De Silva <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">asking for the return of the pound he had either lent to Saranealis or given to<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">him for safekeeping.139 Some time later, on 5 October, 1906, James Charles <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">instituted court proceedings against Saris Appu for using threatening words. He <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">must have thought better of it, because he failed to appear in court and the case <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was dismissed.140 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">A more serious business lawsuit occurred soon afterwards between Y. B. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis, now occupying his new premises on Douglas Street, and S. K. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris, who had completed his term of imprisonment and returned to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island. The Pilot in its issue of Saturday 20 October, 1906, carried the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">following story:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">On Wednesday evening about a quarter past five, the police were called to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Y. B. Saranealis\u2019 shop in Douglas Street, where a disturbance had been <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">made, it is alleged by S. K. Amadoris, a fellow-countryman and a rival in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business as pearl-dealer, etc. Amadoris was taken in charge and locked up; <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and on Thursday morning was brought up at the Police Court, before Mr.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">C. D. O\u2019Brien, Acting Police Magistrate, charged with being armed with a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">lethal weapon.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Evidence was given that Amadoris had gone into Saranealis\u2019s office <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">holding a knife behind his back and attempted to stab him. He was prevented <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">by Johannes, a Sri Lankan in Saranealis\u2019s employ, and a carpenter named Pryke.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The police were immediately summoned and charged Amadoris with being <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">armed with an offensive weapon. According to Amadoris, he had purchased a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">pearl from a Japanese, which Saranealis had offered to purchase from him for <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u00a345, but, the money not being forthcoming, he came twice to the shop to ask <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">for it. On both occasions Saranealis was out. On the third visit, when he saw <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis go into the shop, he followed him, asked for his money and was hit <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on the neck by Johannes. \u2018While the police were there, [Amadoris] offered <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis the pearl and \u00a350 if he would withdraw the charge, but Saranealis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">would not; he wanted satisfaction for what happened six or seven years ago.\u2019<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amadoris made the same offer at the lockup, but it was refused. The zeal and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">meticulousness with which the editor of the Pilot reported the first day\u2019s hearing <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of the case were not repeated when it came to the second day\u2019s hearing. The <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">magistrate delivered his verdict in favour of Amadoris, who was discharged <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">forthwith.141 Y. B. Saranealis was the target of at least two other attacks: on<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">7 July, 1913, he complained successfully against Charlie Saris (possibly K. N. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saris) for assault and sureties of the peace; and he was apparently stabbed in late <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1918, although he laid no complaint on that occasion.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">A far more serious case involved James Charles. In September 1908, he <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was the victim of attempted murder by Charlie Madras, either an Indian from <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Madras or another Sri Lankan.142 Madras was brought before the court on 2 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">September, remanded and recommitted to the next Criminal Sittings of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Circuit Court to be held in Cairns on Monday 21 September, 1908. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The Sri Lankan business community, which had not yet assumed its <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">relatively settled inter-war character, was clearly in ferment. We can only <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">speculate as to whether these cases, which occurred during a period of economic <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contraction, were the result of personality clashes, personal grievances or <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business rivalries; whether they arose from the struggle to survive in an <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">intensely competitive commercial environment; or indicate attempts by certain <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">individuals to dominate the lucrative local gem trade by forcing out<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">competitors.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Social Integration<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Vital registration data, court records and gravestones on Thursday Island reveal <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">something of the personal lives of the Sri Lankans who made the place their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">long-term home. Despite hysterical reports in the Bulletin that, on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island, \u2018Chinaman, Cingalese, Manila natives, aliens of all sorts soon discover <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">resting places for themselves upon [female immigrant] British bosoms\u2019,143 the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">majority of \u2018first wave\u2019 immigrants survived on Thursday Island without the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">comfort and support of legitimate family. Even those who were married were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">prevented by government policy from bringing their foreign-born wives with <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">them to live in Australia and were discouraged from associating with local <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Indigenous women. Naturally, there were \u2018irregular\u2019 unions that resulted in the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">births of children who took either the maiden or married name of their mother.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Since the natural fathers are not officially recorded in such cases, we have relied <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on information passed down through families who claim some measure of Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lankan heritage, among them: Ahmat, Barba, Cowley, Dan, Doolah, Dorante, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Dubbins, Gagai, Mills, Mingo, Randolph, Sabatino, Salam, Walters and Ware <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(from Torres Strait); Albaniel, Bon, Conboy, Fabila, Natera, Rautoka and Silva <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(from PNG).<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Some of the early settlers did contract legal marriages. James de Silva, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">who was born about 1875 in Galle, married the widow, May Scott Mosa, on 21 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">May, 1890, in Cooktown. May was a shopkeeper on Thursday Island at the time <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of her marriage and was three years older than her husband. She was born in\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43259 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Joe-Warnakulasuriya-321x400.jpg\" alt=\"Joe Warnakulasuriya\" width=\"321\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Joe Warnakulasuriya as a young man, c.1950s.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Courtesy of Mahendra Mendis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Samoa to a European father <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">and possibly a Samoan <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">mother. Interestingly, in the <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">light of race relations at the <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">time, the witnesses to their <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">marriage were the Filipino- <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">English couple, Antonio <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Puerte and Elizabeth Massey <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Spain.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">De Silva\u2019s rival, Henry <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Louis Simon, had married <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Annie May Holmes in 1885.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There were tensions in the <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">marriage and some years <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">later she complained to<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">police that her husband had <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">used threatening language to <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">her. Elizabeth Massey Spain <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">testified that he had accused <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">his wife of sleeping with his <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">nephew and she had been <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">present in their house when: <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He upset the chair his wife was sitting on and punched her over against <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">the rail and said, go and put me in gaol again \u2014 she said I will go and get a <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">separation. He said go. She went and as she was going he said, Come back <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">or I will shoot you. I thought he would take her life and followed her in.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">She gave him a lot of papers. He tore them all up. He was growling at her<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">all the time.144 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Two other early arrivals who are attested as being married were the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">divers, Assan Ceylon, who was living with his unnamed wife in John Street in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1900, and Thomas Morris, who married an Aboriginal woman on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island in 1891 \u2014 the only marriage of a Sri Lankan recorded on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island before Federation.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Despite cultural differences, marriages to European or \u2018half-caste\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Australian-born women conferred personal, social and commercial benefits, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and others besides James de Silva, Henry Louis Simon and Thomas Morris <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">made such marriages.145 James Charles (Amadoris), the jeweller living in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Douglas Street, had a European wife, Florence Elizabeth Charles, who, like<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Annie May Simon, helped in her husband\u2019s business and was also subject to<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">abuse.146 On 20 January, 1905, Florence took her husband to court for using<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">threatening language.147 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The later marriages between Y. B. Saranealis and English-born Alice <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Stewart, and between H. L. Mowlis and the young widow, Clara Fabian Santos, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the locally born daughter of a Filipino father and Torres Strait Islander mother, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">appear to have been less volatile. Y. B. Saranealis was born about 1876 in Galle <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to Yanandaygoda Buddalegay Donsiman and Beuter Anohamy.148 The young <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis arrived on Thursday Island aged about 20 and rapidly immersed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">himself in mainstream community life. On 30 October, 1897, the Pilot, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">reporting on forthcoming festivities in honour of the Prince of Wales\u2019 birthday<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on 9 November, mentioned that the Wybenia Cycle Club had organised a series <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of cycle races. Saranealis had entered five races in all and was placed fairly high <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">up on the handicap list. When the races were run, he was able to secure third <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">place in one race. The newspaper also revealed that he was a contributor to the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island Hospital.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Saranealis married Alice Stewart on 24 September, 1900, on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island. Alice was a year older, born in London of Scottish descent. Saranealis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was naturalised on 26 March, 1902, soon after the birth of his first child.149 He <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">is said to have been mysteriously stabbed one night in about 1918, although <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">nobody was charged with the assault.150 Weakened by the wound, he died <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">shortly afterwards during the influenza epidemic on Thursday Island on 30 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">January, 1919. Alice died on 3 January, 1955. They lie in the same grave along <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with four of their six children, three boys and three girls, all born on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island.151<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Of the Saranealis boys, it was Eddie who was the best known. Despite his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">lack of formal qualifications, Y. B. Saranealis had successfully practised dentistry <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">from at least 1900, having studied by correspondence course, and, after his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">death, Eddie continued to practice from the new premises on Douglas Street, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">not far from the Metropole Hotel.152 He is said to have treated the Governor of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland, Sir Leslie Wilson, during his visit in October 1933. When the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland Home Secretary passed a new act enabling practising but <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">unqualified practitioners to sit for a qualifying examination, Eddie Saranealis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">left Thursday Island for the first time in his life for Brisbane, where he \u2018passed<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the examination with flying colours, and returned to Thursday Island a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">diplomaed dentist\u2019.153 According to Y. B. Saranealis\u2019s grandson, the brothers,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">despite their contributions to the commercial and cultural life of the island,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018suffered from a great deal of racial prejudice\u2019 and, with the exception of Buddy, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">became recluses. All the children were \u2018gifted artists and musicians\u2019, the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">daughters were also talented painters, and Ruby \u2018made the most exquisite <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">carvings from mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell using what I must assume are <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">186 Navigating Boundaries<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">traditional Sinhalese handcraft methods\u2019.154 Some of her pieces are held in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">private collections throughout Australia.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Hikkadawa Leana Mowlis, another immigrant from Galle, was born<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">about 1886, the son of a merchant, Hikkadawa Leana Singho Appu, and his<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">wife, Gegarabamak Balo Hanney. Mowlis, a man of recognised probity, became<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">a naturalised Australian on 19 April, 1911.155 Mowlis married the widow, Clara <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Fabian Santos, on 2 June, 1915, on Thursday Island after the murder of her first <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">husband and an unwittingly bigamous second marriage. Clara and Mowlis<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">began living together \u2018some time\u2019 before their marriage, possibly about the time <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of his naturalisation, which was also the time of the discovery of the bigamous <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">marriage. The legal difficulties were resolved after advice from the Queensland <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Crown Solicitor. Mowlis, wrote the Protector of Aboriginals on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island, was in business there \u2018as a jeweller and pearl dealer\u2019 and had \u2018a good <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">reputation\u2019.156 The couple had no children and Clara died on 28 June, 1917, at <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island. Mowlis continued to advertise his services as a pearl buyer,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">watchmaker and jeweller until 1923, after which he disappears from the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island records.157<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Another family that figures prominently in the Thursday Island cemetery <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">is the Warnakulasuriya\/Ahmat family. Punchi Appu (Peter) Warnakulasuriya <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was born in Tangalla, Ceylon, in 1888 and died on 15 April, 1981. He was a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">relative of Punchi Hewa Mendis, who brought him to Thursday Island under <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">indenture \u2018in the early part of 1918\u2019. Warnakulasuriya was educated at St <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thomas\u2019s College, Mt Lavinia (between Colombo and Galle), and had<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">previously lived in Burma and Singapore. He became a highly proficient pearl <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cleaner and spent the rest of his long life on Thursday Island.158 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Warnakulasuriya reputedly fathered six children by Amcia Usop Ahmat, the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island-born daughter of a Muslim fisherman from Borneo and his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Cape York Aboriginal wife.159 After Ahmat\u2019s death from tuberculosis, Peter and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Amcia lived together, effectively regularising their long-lasting union.160 Their<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">second son, Joseph (Joe), born on 12 February, 1927, was legally adopted and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">took his father\u2019s name. According to Nissanka Mendis, son of Punchi Hewa <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mendis, his father took Joe to Sri Lanka at the age of seven and educated him at <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Mahinda College, Galle, hoping that he would become a Buddhist monk.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">However, he returned to Thursday Island in 1949. He died of a heart attack on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">4 October, 1973, while closing up Mendis\u2019s shop one afternoon, and he is buried <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on Thursday Island.161<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Warnakulasuriya\u2019s sponsor, patron and relative was Punchi Hewa Mendis, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">who was born on 12 September, 1883, in Galle and arrived on Thursday Island <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on 23 October, 1898, on the S.S. Duke of Westminster. He died there on 8 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">September, 1965. In 1915, he married Mercy De Silva, a niece of Singapore\u2019s<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">famed jeweller and sponsor of jewellers, Mudaliyar B. P. De Silva. Under the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">immigration restrictions of the time, he was not permitted to bring his wife to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Australia but visited her every few years and their union produced two sons.162 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Extremely respected, he and later his family held an ambiguous position in the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">racial hierarchy of Thursday Island (as did the families of mixed Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">heritage). His business acumen, personal charm and evident integrity led to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">social acceptance by a wide cross-section of the community; he also privately <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">assisted other local businessmen in adversity, such as Chinese merchant Tsing <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">See Kee, from whom he had purchased his shop on Douglas Street and to whom <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">he lent money on the strength of their long relationship and a handshake.163 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The family counted a range of Thursday Island residents among their friends:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">these included not only members of the European and Coloured business elite, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">but the families of the old \u2018Malays\u2019, whom Mendis had met soon after his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">arrival, such as the Ahmats, Bindorahos, Jias and Lobans. Some of these were<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">among the more than 200 guests who attended Amara Mendis\u2019s 76th birthday<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">celebration in Brisbane in March 2004.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">What emerges from the biographies of these men, apart from their<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">entrepreneurial success, is the manner of their \u2018recruitment\u2019 to Thursday Island<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2014 being sponsored by extended family members and sponsoring others in turn<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2014 their continued adherence to Buddhist principles and practice, sometimes<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">turbulent commercial partnerships with countrymen, and cultivation of a wideranging<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">network of personal and business connections throughout Australia and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Asia. People of all ethnic backgrounds and religious affiliations were included <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">among their Thursday Island friends. Indeed, crucial to their success was the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">extent to which they gained the support of non-Sri Lankan residents of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island. James De Silva\u2019s sureties when he took out his hawker\u2019s licence <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were the European sheller, Henry Dubbins, and Moyden, a Muslim Indian<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">waterman; and the witnesses to his marriage were a Filipino-English couple, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Antonio Puerte Spain and Elizabeth Massey. Mowlis acquired the business and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">stock of the prominent Filipino businessman, Heriberto Zarcal; and his marriage <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">witnesses were Thomas Toulasik, a Timorese pearl shell cleaner and member of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Dutch Reformed Church, and Johanna Mayor, the Catholic daughter of a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Filipino diver and Torres Strait Islander mother. Saranealis named his second <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">son for Zarcal, who, like him, had married a European wife. Mendis owed his <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">business beginnings to the confidence placed in him by English-born Alexander <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Corran, the editor of the Pilot, who treated him like a son; the local European <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">bank manager; and the Chinese businessman, See Kee.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The \u2018second wave\u2019 of Sri Lankan immigrants, who came with the<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">intention of participating in the gem trade, put down deeper roots on Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island than their predecessors. However, they immigrated during a period of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">188 Navigating Boundaries<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">intense racism and suffered its emotional consequences. Their children, who <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were born in Australia to mothers of Indigenous descent, were generally <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">accepted by their mothers\u2019 community. The ethnic status of those born locally <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to European mothers was more problematical: they, in fact, belonged neither to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the White nor local \u2018Coloured\u2019 communities. While technically \u2018Coloured\u2019, i.e., <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">not of entirely northern European origin, their parents were prominent, wealthy <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and well-educated businesspeople, spoke excellent English, were British <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">subjects, entertained a wide range of local people in their homes, provided <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">essential services to the whole community without distinction as to ethnic <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">origin, and their behaviour and aspirations were essentially those of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">surrounding Europeans. However, dominant European racial attitudes towards <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the children of Sri Lankan-European descent were paradoxical, as indicated by <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Acting Principal of the State School (not quite correctly) just before the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">outbreak of the Pacific War:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The races represented on the Island, in addition to Europeans, are: <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Chinese, Japanese, Torres Strait islanders and mainland Aboriginals \u2026 In <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">addition there are a couple of families, white predominating, containing <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Southern European or Cingalese blood. These live as white people and are <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">accepted in white society \u2026164 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Cultural Contribution<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Business was the main arena in which Sri Lankans interacted with and were <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">known to the Thursday Island community \u2014 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">In the distilled sunlight of the streets, with their avenues of almond and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">weeping fig and light green cocoanuts, are the shaded shops of Cingalese <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">jewellers and Japanese and Chinese merchants selling all that is quaint <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and delightful, from deftly carved trifles of Australian pearl and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">tortoiseshell to dugong steak and long soup165<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2014 but they also shared their cultural heritage in the spheres of religion, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">sport, music, dance and philanthropy. Even before the construction of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Buddhist temple, between 10 and 12 devout Sri Lankan Buddhists came to Alis <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Appu\u2019s house to pray together on the verandah almost every evening. They <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">called the house a \u2018temple\u2019, since it served that function, but the court insisted <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that \u2018temple\u2019 be crossed out and \u2018house\u2019 inserted. Evidence was taken in court<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">from Alis Appu in 1890 that \u2018every day except when steamer in\u2019, he prayed in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the temple between 6 and 7.30pm. Saris, too, came regularly to pray. Alis Appu <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">described the manner of their devotion as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">We sit down when we pray. We no use book at that time. All pray. All <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">people say prayer together. There was not lamp in the room. Every body <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was outside in the verandah. Nobody get up before the finish.166<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The prewar Buddhist temple was located about four doors down from the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Post Office at the end of Douglas Street and near the Chinese quarter. A sacred <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">tree was planted nearby.167 A Buddhist monk was brought from Sri Lanka to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">inaugurate the temple and it was visited from time to time by a Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">priest.168 Every full moon there was a procession with lighted candles, Chinese <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">lanterns, flags and a drummer; and Wesak, the most significant Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Buddhist festival, was celebrated annually with a long procession, \u2018fervour and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">festivity\u2019.169 Sri Lankans may have planted the cluster of vivid pink frangipani <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">trees near the entrance to the Church of England Quetta Memorial Cathedral <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">in memory of their compatriots who died in the wreck of the S. S. Quetta.170 A <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">visitor to Thursday Island remarked that this particular variety of frangipani \u2018is <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">found in profusion in Ceylon and is known as the \u201ctemple flower\u201d. When we <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">visited any of the rock temples in that country we saw the Singalese placing the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">vivid blossoms before the shrine of Buddha.\u2019171 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Buddhism, which was symbolised by the monthly processions and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">construction of the temple, was not the only major projection of Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">culture on Thursday Island. Moreover, while the majority of the Sri Lankans <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">were Buddhist, some were Muslim and there were Buddhists among the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Japanese.172 Despite their vigorous religious and cultural independence,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">revealed by the absence on gravestones of any Christian associations,173 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">members of the community made many contributions to civic life in their <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">adopted home. Of particular importance was their contribution through <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">performance \u2014 in sport, music and dance \u2014 to the vibrant, syncretic <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Coloured\u2019 culture that was evolving at the time. As Neuenfeldt points out <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">(Chapter 11, this volume), the Asian seamen \u2018brought their musicianship, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">music and performance cultures with them\u2019 to Torres Strait, the Sri Lankans <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contributing their drums and drumming style to the dance band interpretations <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of popular music. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">On 18 May, 1901, the Pilot carried a review of a brilliant display of Sri <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Lankan musical and literary culture at the local School of Arts. Members of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">community pooled their resources to present two performances of Prince Ramlan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and Princess Pewlina, a musical drama based on a traditional story, in English and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Sinhalese. The enthusiastic reviewer commented that \u2018the whole of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">performers did their work with credit to themselves greater than could in many <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">other instances be accorded to amateurs, or some professionals\u2019. This was not <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the only performance given by the community during its heyday. In early 1902, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">190 Navigating Boundaries<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">some Sri Lankans, who were upset by the noise made during rehearsals for a play <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and concert at J. P. James\u2019s house on Victoria Parade, took the offenders to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">court. Charles Mendis, who was not one of the performers, told the magistrate: <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018They make a great noise every night getting ready for a play.\u2019 Those <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">complained of were members of the Sinhalese Opera Club and, at the end of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">January 1902, they performed a series of operas at the School of Arts, one of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">which was Prince Manora and Princess Emlin. The Pilot of 1 February, 1902, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">commented on the \u2018curiously oriental\u2019 character of the operas and on the fact <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">that few Europeans attended. The Sri Lankans were great supporters of the local <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">hospital and contributed to various charitable funds:174 on this occasion, the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">club donated one evening\u2019s takings of \u00a31.15 to the hospital.175<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The \u2018Coloured\u2019 culture of music and dance, to which each Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island Asian community contributed, flowered most brilliantly during the interwar <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">years. Various commentators remarked on its vitality and richness, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">including the novelist, Ernestine Hill, who wrote favourably of the Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contribution during her 1933 visit: <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The impression that all is well would be heightened by listening to the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Thursday Island Town Band, polychromatic, but full of harmony and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">vigour, playing upon the jetty on Sunday evenings. Its members, in dapper <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">uniform, are under the baton of a half-caste Cingalese conductor, and the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">strains of \u2018Dixie\u2019 and other melodies are wafted across the Straits \u2026176 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">The conductor was probably Edward Saranealis, who was also an excellent<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">violinist and composer of violin music.177 He and his brother Donsiman <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">belonged to the town band,178 which sometimes accompanied the silent films <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">shown at the local cinema,179 and both contributed to the Thursday Island <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Silver Jubilee Celebration of King George V in 1935. On that occasion, at the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">height of prewar racism, all the officials named were Europeans and only two <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">items were performed by non-Whites: Item 1, the National Anthem, performed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">by \u2018Mrs Sullivan and Mr E[dward] Saranealis\u2019; and Item 13, \u2018a cornet solo <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">entitled True Love Polka performed by Mr D[onsiman] H[eriberto] Saranealis, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">with piano accompaniment by Mrs Sullivan\u2019.180<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Conclusion<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Individual Sri Lankans (\u2018Cingalese\u2019) joined other foreign seamen in the 1870s <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Torres Strait pearl rush but a distinctive Sri Lankan community came into <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">existence only after 1882 with the arrival on Thursday Island of 25 indentured <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">seamen. Some became the first watermen who, before the construction of the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">jetties in 1893, provided a crucial service to the regional economy by ferrying <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">passengers and cargo to and from visiting ships. The shift of most commercial <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">activity to the township from the mid-1880s led to the establishment of a<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Cingalese quarter\u2019 and, for most of its 60-year history, the Sri Lankan <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">community was associated with that section of Thursday Island. The once <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">flourishing community declined precipitously soon after Federation with the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">departure of most of its members amid widespread prejudice against Asians, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">fears for what the future might hold and the collapse of the pearling industry. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">While their exact numbers are unknown, the Sri Lankans remained a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">salient group until the outbreak of World War II, distinctive enough to be <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">singled out by contemporary observers. Some of the early immigrants became <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">commercial fishermen and owners of boats for hire; others took out hawkers\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">licences to sell jewellery and other curios made from tortoise shell, pearl shell <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and pearls to tourists and visitors. By the early 1900s, the original watermen, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">known for their quarrelsome behaviour, had declined in actual numbers and as a <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">proportion of the general population, and had been replaced by a \u2018second wave\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of immigrants. More sedate than their predecessors, these small-shopkeepers <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and businessmen occupied a specialised and profitable niche in the gem trade as<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">cleaners, polishers, manufacturers, valuers and dealers in pearls, pearl shell and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">tortoise shell. As Swan remarks, \u2018These middlemen were among the best <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">rewarded although not among the more colourful of the pearling hierarchy.\u2019181 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">For more than six decades, the Sri Lankan community made significant <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">contributions to the economic, religious, social and cultural life of Thursday <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Island. All of them have left, the Mendis and Saranealis families being the last <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">to end their association. Little physical trace of their presence remains, but the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">prominent business families are still remembered. Not only did they provide <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">goods and services not available elsewhere, but, through their acts of generosity <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and willingness to share their heritage with the entire community, they formed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">enduring relationships with their fellow residents, regardless of ethnic origin or <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">religious affiliation.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Notes<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1 This is a revised and expanded version of Chapter Eight of Sparkes, S. J., 1988, Sri Lankan<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Migrants in Queensland in the Nineteenth Century, Brisbane. pp. 75\u201385. Additional information was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">provided by the second author from archival and vital registration data and the chapter also draws <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">on Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century: a note\u2019, Journal of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 67, No. 1. pp. 55\u201363. Also Weerasooria, W. S. 1988. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia: a book about the Sri Lankans (Ceylonese) in Australia. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Colombo: Government Press. Pinnawala, S. 1988. \u2018Sri Lankans.\u2019 In James Jupp (ed.), The <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Australian People: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, North Ryde: Angus and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Robertson. pp. 805\u20138. Sparkes, S. J. 2001. \u2018Sri Lankans.\u2019 In M. Brandle (ed.), Multicultural <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Queensland 2001, Brisbane: Multicultural Affairs Queensland. pp. 330\u20132. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Court records, which provide most of the new data, generally specify an individual\u2019s Sri Lankan origin <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">and are therefore more accurate regarding origin than the mainland sources examined by Sparkes (Sri Lankan Migrants in Queensland in the Nineteenth Century, p. 86), who found that death records were<br \/>\ncompromised by spelling errors and errors of ethnic identification. Difficulties also arise because of the widespread use of the omnibus term \u2018Malay\u2019 for \u2018men from all over the Malay Archipelago, from Ceylon and parts of India\u2019 (Ellis, A. F. 1936. Adventuring in Coral Seas. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. p. 76.), and the different categorisation procedures employed by official agencies. For example, Queensland departure statistics for \u2018Coloured Persons from the Commonwealth\u2019 conflate \u2018Cingalese and Hindoos\u2019 as a single category. \u2018Departures of Coloured Persons from the Commonwealth\u2019, NAA\/CRS\/A\/38, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA). We wish to express our special gratitude to Amara and Mahendra Mendis for their contribution to this chapter and gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Joan Humphreys, of the Sydney Burns Philp Archives; Jeremy Hodes, Siripala Mendis, Yuriko Nagata, Rodney Sullivan, Colin Sheehan and Michael Stubbins, former Registrar of the Magistrates Court, Thursday Island.<br \/>\n2 The term \u2018Cingalese\u2019 is not entirely synonymous with the present-day form of the word<br \/>\n\u2018Sinhalese\u2019, since a small number of the immigrants may have been Tamils or Ceylon Moors.<br \/>\n3 Ceylon gained its independence from Great Britain in 1948 and became Sri Lanka in 1972.<br \/>\n4 \u2018Punchi Hewa Mendis to Amara Mendis.\u2019 Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 20 February, 2004.<br \/>\n5 Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 21 March, 2004.<br \/>\n6 \u2018H. M. Chester, Police Magistrate, Thursday Island, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, 4 June 1879.\u2019<br \/>\nCOL\/A284\/3725, Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA).<br \/>\n7 \u2018Inquiry into death of Cypriano Trinidad held 3 April 1901.\u2019 JUS\/N295\/01\/183, QSA.<br \/>\n8 Letter from James Burns to the Colonial Secretary in Ceylon, dated 19 June, 1882, seeking approval for the recruitment of \u2018Cingalese\u2019, reproduced in Sparkes, S. J., Sri Lankan Migrants in Queensland in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 3\u20134.<br \/>\n9 Eva Mingo Peacock, granddaughter of Balo and the Danish pearl-sheller, Thomas Randolph, pers. comm., 10 August, 2000.<br \/>\n10 Bombay was the father of Rosie, who married Nicholas Albaniel, a Filipino catechist. Both became early Catholic missionaries in PNG (Jeanette Fabila, great-granddaughter of Rosie Albaniel, pers. comm., 1 April, 2004). One branch of the family believes he may have been Sri Lankan.<br \/>\n11 Coppinger, R. W. 1883. Cruise of the \u2018Alert\u2019: four years in the Patagonian, Polynesian, and Mascarene waters (1878\u20131882). London: Swan Sonnenschein. p. 194.<br \/>\n12 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 55.<br \/>\n13 For the full text of the contract, signed by the men before J. D. Mason, Police Magistrate, in Galle on 12 June, 1882, see Sparkes, S. J., Sri Lankan Migrants in Queensland in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 75\u20136.<br \/>\n14 Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 139.<br \/>\n15 \u2018Governor of Ceylon to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, despatch dated 12 August 1882\u2019; \u2018H. M. Chester, Police Magistrate, Thursday Island, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, 31 August 1882\u2019, COL A\/346\/4742, QSA.<br \/>\n16 \u2018H. M. Chester, Police Magistrate, Thursday Island, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, 5 September 1882.\u2019 COL A\/346, QSA.<br \/>\n17 See, for example, the letter from \u2018Acting Secretary, Land Administration Board, to Under<br \/>\nSecretary, Department of Health and Home Affairs, Brisbane\u2019, dated 7 July, 1937, regarding<br \/>\nthe creation of the Hammond Island reserve. TR1794 Box 142 SL6614, QSA. 18 \u2018T. De Hoghton, Lieutenant-Commanding HMS Beagle, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, 22 September 1879, Reporting on the Pearl-shell Fisheries of Torres Straits.\u2019 Queensland Votes and Proceedings (hereafter QVP), 1880, p. 1163.<br \/>\n19 \u2018Thomas McNulty, Thursday Island, to Attorney-General, 13 October 1883.\u2019 COL\/A370\/5183, QSA.<br \/>\n20 \u2018[T]he original policy discouraged pearl shellers to [sic] settle there. So at first the population did not increase rapidly. There was no appreciable increase until 1885, which coincided with the The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island 193<br \/>\narrival of the Hon. John Douglas \u2026 as Government Resident.\u2019 Lock, A. C. C. 1955. Destination<br \/>\nBarrier Reef. Melbourne: Georgian House. p. 75.<br \/>\n21 Thursday Island census c.1885, A\/18963, QSA.<br \/>\n22 \u2018Report from John Douglas, Thursday Island, 1 July 1886.\u2019 COL\/A457\/1583, QSA.<br \/>\n23 \u2018Thursday Island: Return of population collected by police on 1st April 1901\u2019 and again \u2018on March 1st 1902\u2019, Fort Record Book, Green Hill, Thursday Island, 1899\u20131912, AWM 1\/12\/2. Canberra: Australian War Memorial Library.<br \/>\n24 \u2018Return of population of Thursday Island and the Prince of Wales group of islands on the 24th day of April 1918.\u2019 Fort Record Book, Green Hill, Thursday Island, 1898\u20131927, AWM 1\/12\/1. Canberra: Australian War Memorial Library.<br \/>\n25 The correct name is \u2018Goods Island\u2019 but, probably because of a misreading of the final \u2018s\u2019 as an \u2018e\u2019, it has been called \u2018Goode Island\u2019 since at least the 1880s. The island was named by Matthew Flinders in November 1802 for the botanical gardener, Peter Good, who accompanied him on his surveying mission. Good, Peter. 1981. The Journal of Peter Good: gardener on Matthew Flinders voyage to Terra Australia 1801\u201303. London: British Museum (Natural History). p. 28.<br \/>\n26 At least one Sri Lankan, Jimmy Cook, was a patient of the lazaret. He was the cook on a station west of Townsville and was admitted on 11 August, 1894. \u2018Report of the Medical Officer of the<br \/>\nLazaret, Friday Island, 31 August 1898.\u2019 QVP (4), p. 633.<br \/>\n27 Torres News, No. 32, 19 August, 1986.<br \/>\n28 The latter can be traced through advertisements in the local newspaper, The Torres Straits Pilot and New Guinea Gazette (hereafter the Pilot), which first appeared on 2 January, 1888, and entries in Pugh\u2019s Almanac and General Directory (hereafter Pugh\u2019s Almanac), Queensland Post Office Directory (hereafter Post Office) and Willmett\u2019s North Queensland Almanac Directory.<br \/>\n29 The variant spellings and sometimes illegible handwriting of court records, the similarity of names and the absence of oral evidence make unique identification impossible except in a few cases.<br \/>\nAn additional problem concerns the Anglicised variants of names: James Charles Amadoris, for example, adopted James Charles as his business name; Gostene Waduga Andris also signed George<br \/>\nWilliam Andris. We have regularised the spellings for consistency: thus, Amadoris for Amadorus, Amodoris; Harmanis for Armenis, Hermanes, Hermanus, Hermonious; Siyadoris for Sedoris, Sedorus, Seedoris, Sidorus, etc. Despite the appellation of \u2018Cingalese\u2019 for their owners, some names are not recognisably Sri Lankan, e.g., Danolis, Didwan, Jetsunamy and its variants, Jetuan, Jetuharry, Jetsuany, Jetsunany.<br \/>\n30 Probably Simon Silva from Galle, who is said to have been responsible for establishing the<br \/>\nBuddhist temple on Thursday Island.<br \/>\n31 \u2018Edward Morey vs Ten Singalese for breach of agreement, 8\u20139 January 1901.\u2019 CPS13D\/P8, QSA.<br \/>\n32 According to Pinnawala (\u2018Sri Lankans\u2019, p. 805), this was in contrast with the majority of recent Sri Lankan immigrants to Australia, who have been Christians.<br \/>\n33 They may have been the descendants of Indonesians brought to Ceylon by the Dutch to man their garrisons.<br \/>\n34 Most of the brawls started after drinking bouts in the local hotels and a minority of the men became alcoholics. One was the fisherman, S. K. Simon, who \u2018gets drunk every day\u2019. \u2018H. L. Simon vs S. K. Simon for using threatening language to one H. L. Simon, 17 July 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n35 It would seem that Henry Reynolds\u2019 reference to \u2018Cingalese\u2019 women (North of Capricorn: the untold story of Australia\u2019s north. 2003. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin. p. 89) is not supported by the cited source.<br \/>\n36 \u2018[T]he management of the boats, the locality of the fishing, the times of fishing, besides the actual gathering of the shell, is entirely left to the divers.\u2019 \u2018T. De Hoghton, Lieutenant-Commanding HMS Beagle, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, 22 September 1879: Reporting on the Pearl-shell Fisheries of Torres Straits.\u2019 QVP, 1880.<br \/>\n37 \u2018G. H. Bennett (Inspector of Pearlshell Fisheries) vs Assan Ceylon for permitting an unlicensed person to be employed as diver, 12 April 1901.\u2019 CPS13D\/P9, QSA.<br \/>\n194 Navigating Boundaries<br \/>\n38 \u2018H. L. Simon vs S. K. Simon for using threatening language to one H.L. Simon, 17 July 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n39 \u2018Frank Vassou vs John Tolman for claim wages, 21 and 23 July 1890.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P3, QSA.<br \/>\n40 Somerset Register of Marriages, 31 January, 1891.<br \/>\n41 \u2018Martin vs Johnny Bombay for assault, 18 and 24 February 1885.\u2019 CPS13D\/P1, QSA. Some of Bombay\u2019s descendants claim he was Sri Lankan but there is no direct proof of his origins. He may have died in February 1889 in Cygnet Bay, King Sound, Western Australia. Photograph of death notice taken by Val Burton at Cygnet Bay, WA, in Malay\/Koepanger vertical file, Broome Historical Society, Broome, WA.<br \/>\n42 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 59.<br \/>\n43 \u2018List of male inhabitants of Thursday Island having had military service and\/or possessing service rifles\u2019, [n.d. c.1914], Fort Record Book, Green Hill, Thursday Island, 1898\u20131927, AWM 1\/12\/1. Canberra: Australian War Memorial Library.<br \/>\n44 Simon is thought to have died in the early 1960s, aged in his 90s. There is a photograph of him in Burchill, E. 1972. Thursday Island Nurse. Adelaide: Rigby. opp. p. 23., with the caption: \u2018Photo of Simon, reputedly the oldest man on Thursday Island and probably of the whole Torres Straits. He is a permanent resident of the General Hospital.\u2019<br \/>\n45 Amara and Mahendra Mendis, pers. comm., 20 February, 2004.<br \/>\n46 \u2018Annual Return of Curator of Intestate Estates, 1 January 1891\u201331 December 1891.\u2019 QVP, 1892.<br \/>\n47 \u2018Annual Return of Curator of Intestate Estates, 1 January 1900\u201331 December 1900.\u2019 QVP, 1901.<br \/>\n48 \u2018Annual Return of Curator of Intestate Estates, 1 July 1913\u201331 December 1913.\u2019 QVP, 1914.<br \/>\n49 Somerset Register of Deaths, 31 July, 1908.<br \/>\n50 They were Don Singho Appu (John Ceylon), James De Silva and P. Singho (James Cingalese).<br \/>\n\u2018Police vs Singho Appu for unsound mind, 11 April 1892\u2019, CPS13D\/P5; \u2018Police vs John Ceylon<br \/>\nfor protection, 12 April 1892\u2019, CPS13D\/P5; \u2018James de Silva on suspicion of being of unsound<br \/>\nmind, remanded, 20 September 1900\u2019, CPS13D\/P8; \u2018James De Silva on remand charged with<br \/>\nlunacy, 11 October 1900\u2019, CPS13D\/P8; \u2018James Cingalese for being of unsound mind, 22 February 1905\u2019, CPS13D\/P12, QSA. Arthur Graham, of Sri Lankan and European heritage, who was living in the South Sea Home in April 1915, was said to be \u2018half cracked\u2019. Notes of the Diocese of Carpentaria, April 1915, back of p. 41, OM.AV\/113\/1, John Oxley Library.<br \/>\n51 \u2018Police vs Andrew Johnston, 1 August 1885\u2019, CPS13D\/P1; \u2018Police vs Benjamin Raymondo,<br \/>\n30 June 1888\u2019, CPS13D\/P2, QSA.<br \/>\n52 \u2018Police vs Baboon [S. K. Babunappu], 7 November 1889\u2019, CPS13D\/P2; \u2018Police vs Walady,<br \/>\n9 December 1889\u2019, CPS 13D\/P3; \u2018Police vs Thomas, 28 January 1891\u2019, CPS 13D\/P4, QSA.<br \/>\n53 \u2018Valuation by E. L. Brown, Valuer, for the Division of Torres, of the ratable properties in the Division of Torres, 22 April 1886.\u2019 COL\/077, QSA.<br \/>\n54 Jones, E. 1921. Florence Buchanan: the little Deaconess of the South Seas. Sydney: Australian Board of Missions. p. 18. Since Geil does not list it with the other places of worship on the island, we infer that it was built after his visit in 1901. Geil, W. E. 1902. Ocean and Isle. Melbourne: Pater. p. 199.<br \/>\n55 \u2018Police vs Tommy Japanese for disorderly conduct on Victoria Parade, 26 December 1888.\u2019<br \/>\nCPS13D\/P2, QSA.<br \/>\n56 At various times the houses were rented by Amadoris, Allis Appu, Singho Babu, Charles Mendis, H. L. Simon and his wife, and S. K. Simon. \u2018Police vs Odiris for drunk and disorderly, 8 and 9 December 1891.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P4, QSA.<br \/>\n57 The boatman, Amadoris, took over from Allis Appu the tenancy of the house situated on Section 5\/Allotment 2 in the township of Port Kennedy, which the latter had occupied before his death in 1891. He in turn shared the house with the billiard-marker, Andris, and possibly other countrymen and all paid rent to Herbert Bowden, manager for Burns Philp &amp; Co. The house, along with two others, fronted on to a passage which led from Douglas Street to Victoria Parade. \u2018Police vs Odiris on bail for disorderly conduct in Douglas Street, 8 December 1891.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P4, QSA. There appears to have been a particularly close association between the Sri Lankans and Burns Philp &amp; Co.: Burns organised the first mass indenture in 1882; the firm employed mainly The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island 195<br \/>\nSri Lankan watermen on its hulk, Star of Peace; and it also rented its property for use as the<br \/>\n\u2018Cingalese\u2019 boarding house, billiard room and store.<br \/>\n58 \u2018Police vs Miskin for disorderly conduct in Victoria Parade, 7 January 1890.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P3, QSA. Miskin was arrested for fighting with a Malay before a crowd of about 70 men, threatening \u2018a general engagement between the Cingalese and the Malays\u2019.<br \/>\n59 \u2018Police vs Kicumato for assaulting one Saris Appu, 21 July 1902.\u2019 CPS13D\/P10, QSA.<br \/>\n60 \u2018Police vs Miskin and Woo Lin for disorderly conduct, 7 January 1890.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P3, QSA.<br \/>\n61 \u2018Abdula alias Siyadoris on warrant charged with assaulting one Hop Sing, 12 January 1899.\u2019 CPS13D\/P7, QSA.<br \/>\n62 \u2018Police vs William Sam Hee for keeping a common gaming house, 18 October 1901.\u2019 CPS13D\/P9, QSA.<br \/>\n63 Simpson, C. 1952. Come Away, Pearler. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. pp. 14\u201315.<br \/>\n64 See Evans, R., K. Saunders and K. Cronin. 1975. Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination:<br \/>\nrace relations in colonial Queensland. Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co. pp. 2\u20134.<br \/>\n65 Sedin was found guilty and sentenced to death in Normanton on 15 October, 1888.<br \/>\n66 \u2018Viator\u2019, \u2018The Gulf country\u2019. Cummins &amp; Campbell\u2019s Monthly Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 44<br \/>\n(December 1930). pp. 73, 75.<br \/>\n67 Petition from owners and managers of pearl-shelling stations in Torres Strait, October 1883,<br \/>\nattached to letter from \u2018H. M. Chester, Thursday Island, to Colonial Secretary, Brisbane\u2019,<br \/>\nCOL\/370\/5183, QSA.<br \/>\n68 Report of a meeting of the Torres Straits Pearl Shellers Mutual Association, held 19 December, 1884, and sent to Colonial Treasurer by T. O. Stanton, Hon. Secretary, 29 January 1885, TRE\/A30\/648, QSA.<br \/>\n69 Eykyn, T. 1896. Parts of the Pacific. London: Swan Sonnenschein. p. 96.<br \/>\n70 Ward, A. The Miracle of Mapoon. London: Partridge. p. 65.<br \/>\n71 Rowan, E. 1991. The Flower Hunter: the adventures, in northern Australia and New Zealand, of flower painter Ellis Rowan. North Ryde: Collins Angus and Robertson. p. 109.<br \/>\n72 Pilot, 23 and 30 September, 1899, cited in Reynolds, H., North of Capricorn, p. 89.<br \/>\n73 Quoted in Geil, W. E., Ocean and Isle, p. 192.<br \/>\n74 \u2018Bastian vs Mendis for sureties of the peace, 22 November 1899.\u2019 CPS13D\/P8, QSA.<br \/>\n75 Post Office, 1889, 1892, 1892\u201393, 1893, 1895\u201396, 1897\u201399.<br \/>\n76 Willmett\u2019s North Queensland Almanac Directory for 1898, Willmett, 1898.<br \/>\n77 Post Office, 1892, 1893, 1895\u201396, 1897\u201399.<br \/>\n78 \u2018K. P. Appu Singho vs J. P. James for sureties of the peace, 24 January 1902.\u2019 CPS13D\/P10, QSA.<br \/>\n79 At that time, Thursday Island lay on the main sea route between Australia and the Far East as well as Europe and was an important port of call. By 1886, it was visited regularly by ocean steamers of the British India Co., Eastern and Australian Steamship Co., China Steamship Navigation Co. and Gibb, Livingstone and Co.; and, by the turn of the century, the Eastern and Australian Steamship Co., China Navigation Co., Australasian United Steam Navigation Co., Japan Mail Steamship Co. (Nippon Yusen Kaisha) and Queensland Line. Pugh\u2019s Almanac, 1886, p. 511. Pilot,6 January, 1900.<br \/>\n80 \u2018Police vs Humphrey Davy Mills for assaulting one Henry Dubbins in the bar of the Thursday Island Hotel on 10 July 1888, 12 July 1888.\u2019 CPS13D\/P2. \u2018Application of H. L. James Appu de Silva for a Hawkers Licence, sureties Henry Dubbins, Thursday Island, and Moyden, Thursday Island, 27 November 1888.\u2019 PS13D\/P2, QSA.<br \/>\n81 Post Office, 1890.<br \/>\n82 \u2018James De Silva vs George Machal for sureties of the peace, 28 August 1891.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P4, QSA. De Silva is listed as waterman and storekeeper from 1890\u201399 in Post Office, 1890, 1891, 1892,1893, 1895\u201396, 1897\u201399.<br \/>\n83 \u2018J. Silva vs William Price for refusing to proceed to sea in lugger Mobiag, 20 July 1892.\u2019<br \/>\nCPS13D\/P5, QSA. 196 Navigating Boundaries<br \/>\n84 \u2018Punchi Singho vs Samuel for assault, 10 January 1895.\u2019 CPS13D\/P6, QSA.<br \/>\n85 \u2018Police vs James De Silva for disorderly conduct, 15 September 1900.\u2019 CPS13D\/P8, QSA.<br \/>\n86 \u2018James De Silva on remand charged with lunacy, 11 October 1900.\u2019 CPS13D\/P8, QSA.<br \/>\n87 \u2018Arthur Clarence Filewood vs Jimmy De Silva for trespass under the Enclosed Land Act,<br \/>\n11 and 18 July 1927, 15 August 1927.\u2019 QS787\/1\/3, QSA.<br \/>\n88 \u2018Police vs Simon for indecent language in the vicinity of persons passing in Milman Street,<br \/>\n21 September 1885.\u2019 CPS13D\/P1, QSA.<br \/>\n89 \u2018Annie Simon vs James De Silva for sureties of the peace, 14 May 1888.\u2019 CPS13D\/P2, QSA.<br \/>\n90 \u2018Application of Henry L. Simon for a Billiard Licence, one table for premises situated at Victoria Parade, Thursday Island, 26 November 1888\u2019, CPS13D\/P2; \u2018Henry L. Simon for renewal of Billiard Licence, one table, Billiard Room, Victoria Parade, Thursday Island, 3 April 1889\u2019, CPS13D\/P2;\u2018Application of James De Silva of Victoria Parade, Thursday Island, for a Billiard Licence for one table, 1 February 1889\u2019, CPS 13D\/P2; \u2018Application by James De Silva for Billiard Licence, Victoria Parade, 2 April 1891\u2019, CPS 13D\/P4; \u2018Application by James De Silva for renewal of Billiard Licence, one table, 6 April 1892\u2019, CPS13D\/P5, QSA; Post Office, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1895\u201396.<br \/>\n91 Post Office, 1889, 1892\u201393. The partnership may have lasted five years and appears to have been the earliest of the gem trade enterprises.<br \/>\n92 \u2018Application for Hawker\u2019s Licence by H. L. Simon granted, 29 December 1891\u2019, CPS 13D\/P4; \u2018Application for Pawnbroker\u2019s Licence by Henry L. Simon of Victoria Parade, 24 March 1892\u2019, CPS13D\/P5, QSA; Post Office, 1893, 1895\u201396.<br \/>\n93 Pugh\u2019s Almanac, 1893, p. 166; 1894, p. 162.<br \/>\n94 \u2018Police vs William Sam Hee for keeping a common gaming house, 18 October 1901.\u2019 CPS13D\/P9, QSA.<br \/>\n95 \u2018H. L. Simon vs S. K. Simon for using threatening language to one H. L. Simon, 17 July 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n96 \u2018Ah Wang vs O. McLaverty, 16 September 1891\u2019, CPS 13D\/P4; \u2018Application for Hawker\u2019s Licence by H. L. Simon granted, 29 December 1891\u2019, CPS 13D\/P4. Another licensed hawker was Thomas Weerasooria, who gave evidence in \u2018Police vs Ah Bow and Tommy Low Chong for unlawfully conducting an unlawful game in a common gaming house, 24 October 1901\u2019, CPS13D\/P9, QSA. While there was a considerable amount of money to be made from selling jewellery and curios to tourists, the penalty for hawking without a licence was severe. In 1888, William De Silva was convicted of this offence and fined \u00a32 with 3\/6 costs, in default one week\u2019s imprisonment.<br \/>\n\u2018William De Silva for hawking without a licence, 14 November 1888.\u2019 CPS 13D\/S1, QSA.<br \/>\n97 Boothby, G. 1894. On the Wallaby or Through the East and Across Australia. London: Longmans. p. 110.<br \/>\n98 Ibid., pp. 114\u201315.<br \/>\n99 \u2018Matho vs Amadoris for common assault, 14 April 1899\u2019, CPS13D\/P7; \u2018Upon Y. B. Saranealis swearing on information against Simba K. Amadoris for threatening words, 26 October 1906\u2019, CPS13D\/P13, QSA.<br \/>\n100 There was no indication of the name of the proprietor, but the wording of the advertisement and the nature of the merchandise offered suggest a Sri Lankan.<br \/>\n101 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 59. Some of the men were related: Henry Louis Simon and James Charles Amadoris, for example; and possibly the latter and Simba K. Amadoris. Simon\u2019s nephew is also attested as living on Thursday Island in 1885.<br \/>\n102 This \u2018chain migration\u2019 of immigrants is a familiar motif in Torres Strait history and prehistory, beginning with the arrival of the earliest inhabitants from the southern coasts of New Guinea.<br \/>\n103 Yonge, C. M. 1930. A Year on the Great Barrier Reef: the story of corals and of the greatest of theircreations. London: Putnam. p. 172.<br \/>\n104 In Post Office, 1889, 1892\u201393.<br \/>\n105 \u2018W. D. Wimalasundera vs Saris, 24 October 1890\u2019, QSA. Wimalasundera\u2019s shop was next to that of Francis De Bracey, a waterman, possibly also a Sri Lankan. The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island 197<br \/>\n106 \u2018Inspector of Fisheries vs Thomas Fleming for dealing in pearls without having obtained a licence,<br \/>\n7 December 1892.\u2019 CPS13D\/P5, QSA. H. L. Simon and H. L. De Silva were the only Sri Lankans<br \/>\nto hold licences that year.<br \/>\n107 Pilot, 3 July, 1897; Post Office, 1894\u201395, 1896\u201397. The trades of jeweller and watchmaker, a euphemism for \u2018watch repairer\u2019, were allied in Ceylon in those days.<br \/>\n108 \u2018H. L. Silva vs Siyadoris for assault, 15 July 1892.\u2019 CPS13D\/P5, QSA.<br \/>\n109 Post Office, 1895\u201396.<br \/>\n110 Pilot, 7 January, 1899. \u2018Y. B. Saranealis vs Charles De Silva for sureties of the peace, 21 March 1905.\u2019<br \/>\nCPS13D\/P12, QSA. Post Office, 1918\u201319. Saranealis died on Thursday Island in 1919 (see below).<br \/>\n111 \u2018Police vs Kicumato for assaulting one Saris Appu, 21 July 1902.\u2019 CPS13D\/P10. Y. B. Saranealis may have been related to the Saranealis who appeared as a witness for the jeweller, W. D. Wimalasundera, in \u2018W. D. Wimalasundera vs Saris for sureties of the peace, 24 October 1890\u2019, CPS 13D\/P3, QSA.<br \/>\n112 Photograph of Saranealis\u2019s store, Normanby Street, Thursday Island, Plate 17, in G. Cocks, and J.Grace, 1990, \u2018Queensland manufacturing and working jewellers \u2014 1850\u20131900\u2019, Australiana, Vol. 12, No. 4, November. pp. 89\u201395, at p. 95.<br \/>\n113 \u2018David Dietrichson (clerk to the Torres Divisional Board) vs Saranealis and others, 31 March 1897.\u2019 CPS 13D\/S2, QSA.<br \/>\n114 \u2018Matho vs Amadorus for common assault, 14 April 1899.\u2019 CPS13D\/P7, QSA.<br \/>\n115 \u2018Report of the Official Trustee in Insolvency, Townsville, for the year 1899.\u2019 QVP, 1900, p. 19.<br \/>\n116 The Parish Gazette, 1 February, 1913.<br \/>\n117 Pugh\u2019s Almanac, 1915\u201319; 1926\u201327.<br \/>\n118Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 171.<br \/>\n119 He occupied Allotment 7.7.6. \u2018Valuation Appeal Court held 17 April 1905.\u2019 CPS13D\/P12, QSA.<br \/>\n120 \u2018List of Licences to Deal in Pearls Issued in Pursuance of Section 14 of The Pearl-shell and Beche-de- Mer Fishery Act Amendment Act of 1891 during 1907\u2019 \u2026 Royal Pearl-shell and B\u00eache-de-mer Commission, Appendix VI, p. 268, Queensland Parliamentary Papers, 1908.<br \/>\n121 Pugh\u2019s Almanac, 1915, p. 758.<br \/>\n122 Apparently, it was his older brother, Marshall Punchihewa, who was given the boat ticket. He was reluctant to leave home but Mendis, having the same initial, decided, much against his parents\u2019 wishes, to use the ticket himself and seek his fortune in Australia. Marshall Punchihewa later went to Japan. Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 29 April, 2004.<br \/>\n123 Material on P. H. Mendis\u2019s life and business career comes from Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between SriLanka and Australia, pp. 191\u2013209; Lock, A. C. C., Destination Barrier Reef, pp. 130\u20134; \u2018The pearly way<br \/>\nto riches\u2019, People Magazine, 9 April, 1952, pp. 30\u20131; Arun, K. C., \u2018Pearl-shell facade for new<br \/>\nWynnum store of pearl industry pioneer\u2019, Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 13 September, 1960. And from archival files, interviews and family documents kindly made available by Amara and Mahendra Mendis.<br \/>\n124 Mrs Mary Ann Corran bought the business in June 1896 from Frederick Charles Hodel and she and her husband published their first issue on 4 July, 1896. Typewritten notes [unsigned, probably<br \/>\nby Rev. W. H. MacFarlane, and undated], MS3373, National Library of Australia.<br \/>\n125 Siripala Mendis to Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 193. Pugh\u2019sAlmanac, 1920\u201327. In the Pilot of 19 September, 1927, Mendis advertised that he would takeorders for personalised greeting cards, \u2018with Name and Address printed thereon\u2019.<br \/>\n126 Letter dated 16 October, 1962, J25\/190\/1972\/66, NAA. In possession of Amara and Mahendra<br \/>\nMendis.<br \/>\n127 \u2018Communist Party of Australia activity and interest in Thursday Island, 11 December 1949.\u2019 A6122\/40\/273, p. 11, NAA.<br \/>\n128 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 60. Mahendra Mendis, pers. comm., 29 April, 2004.<br \/>\n129 Bands of Sri Lankans occasionally fought with their economic rivals, the Malays and Japanese, 198 Navigating Boundaries<br \/>\nand there are examples of inter-ethnic assaults against individuals. The latter may have been<br \/>\noccasioned by ethnically charged or personal grievances or both, e.g., \u2018Abdula alias Siyadoris<br \/>\non warrant charged with assaulting one Hop Sing, 12 January 1899\u2019, CPS13D\/P7, QSA.<br \/>\n130 \u2018John Douglas, Government Resident, Thursday Island, to Colonial Secretary, 26 October 1885.\u2019<br \/>\nA\/443\/8337, QSA. Our thanks to Jeremy Hodes for providing a transcription of this letter.<br \/>\n131 Rama Soopaya, a prominent Indian trader in the town, and his wife were reportedly assaulted at the same time by some Sri Lankans who used slingshots against them. Soopaya was the Sri Lankans\u2019 main competitor, selling many of the same lines at very low prices and purchasing tortoise shell, then a virtual Sri Lankan monopoly. Pilot, 27 February, 1897.<br \/>\n132 \u2018Police vs Miskin for disorderly conduct in Victoria Parade, 7 January 1890\u2019, CPS 13D\/P3, QSA; Queensland Police Gazette, No. 73 (12 December, 1903). p. 560.<br \/>\n133 \u2018Police vs Billy Jetsunamy for being armed with axe intent to commit a felony, 27 October 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n134 \u2018Inspector of Fisheries vs Thomas Fleming for dealing in pearls without having obtained a licence, 7 December 1892.\u2019 CPS13D\/P5, QSA.<br \/>\n135 Appu Singho and H. L. Simon gave evidence for the prosecution, while J. P. James, Charles Mendis and Saris Appu gave evidence for the defence. James was bound over for a period of six months and was required to provide security in the sum of \u00a310 plus two sureties of \u00a35 each.<br \/>\n136 Pilot, 1 February, 1902.<br \/>\n137 \u2018Police vs James Charles for disorderly conduct in Douglas Street, 15 December 1903.\u2019<br \/>\nCPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n138 She told the court that she bore \u2018no ill will or malice towards the defendant\u2019. She had instituted proceedings because she was afraid of him. Simon was bound over to keep the peace for six months and ordered to pay a fine of \u00a325 plus other costs. \u2018Police (F. Charles) vs H. L. Simon forsureties of the peace, 15 December 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n139 \u2018Y. B. Saranealis vs C. De Silva for sureties of the peace, 21 March 1905.\u2019 CPS13D\/P12, QSA.<br \/>\n140 \u2018James Charles vs Saris Appo for threatening words and required sureties, 5, 15 and 26 October 1906.\u2019 CPS13D\/P13, QSA.<br \/>\n141 The case was continued on 20 October and its outcome reported in a brief paragraph. Pilot, 27 October\u2019,1906.<br \/>\n142 \u2018Rex vs Charlie Madras for attempting to kill one John Charles, 2 and 7 September 1908.\u2019<br \/>\nCPS13D\/P13, QSA.<br \/>\n143 Quoted in Evans, R. et al., Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination, p. 357.<br \/>\n144 \u2018Police vs Henry L. Simon for using threatening language to one Annie Simon at Thursday Island, 29 September 1888.\u2019 CPS13D\/P2, QSA.<br \/>\n145 For discussion of the benefits of such marriages for Chinese settlers on Thursday Island, see Ramsay, G. and A. Shnukal. 2003. \u2018\u201cAspirational\u201d Chinese: achieving community prominence on Thursday<br \/>\nIsland, northeast Australia.\u2019 Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3. pp. 337\u201359.<br \/>\n146 \u2018F. Charles vs H. L. Simon (on remand) for using threatening language to one Florence Charles,18 December 1903.\u2019 CPS13D\/P11, QSA.<br \/>\n147 \u2018Florence Charles vs James Charles for threatening language, 20 January 1905\u2019, CPS13D\/P12,QSA.<br \/>\n148 Donsiman, the spelling that appears in Australian official records, may have originated as a scribalerror for \u2018Don Simon\u2019.<br \/>\n149 Registers of Aliens Naturalized 1901\u201303, SCT\/CF\/39, QSA.<br \/>\n150 Letter from Walter J. Woods, grandson of Y. B. Saranealis to W. S. Weerasooria, dated 2 October, 1987, and quoted in Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 165.<br \/>\n151 The children buried there are: Edward William (Eddie) Saranealis L. D. G., born 2 February, 1902,<br \/>\nand died 2 October, 1971; Donsiman Heriverto (Hubby) Saranealis, born 20 May, 1903, and died3 December, 1978; Stephen Buddalegay (Buddy) Saranealis, born 25 June, 1904, and died 16 February, 1969; Dotchihamy Emma (Dotchie) Saranealis, who died 20 December, 1987. Hubby<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">was likely named for Heriberto Zarcal, who sold his business to Mowlis (see Reynaldo Ileto,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Chapter Five, this volume). Buddy, who was a well-known boxer, was married briefly, but none of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">the Saranealis sons, as far as is known, produced children. Two of the three daughters, Ruby <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Mango and Dotchihamy Emma (Dotchie), never married, but Anohamy Esther married Walter <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Thomas Woods on 29 November, 1928. The couple moved to Cairns and Anohamy died there on <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">the same day as her eldest brother, Eddie. Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Australia, p. 163. Pilot, 25 September, 1935.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">152 Eva Mingo Peacock, pers. comm., 10 August, 2000. Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">and Australia, p. 164. The alternative was to wait for the visits of a mainland dentist every four <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">months. Pilot, 12 September, 1928.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">153 \u201cCurate\u2019s Egg\u201d, \u2018Thursday Island\u2019s dentist\u2019, Smith\u2019s Weekly, 31 October, 1936. Eddie Saranealis changed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">his official occupation from \u2018jeweller\u2019 to \u2018dentist\u2019 during the 1938\u201339 financial year. 56th Annual <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Balance Returns, Thursday Island Branch, Burns Philp &amp; Co., 31 March, 1939, Burns Philp Archive.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">154 Letter from Walter J. Woods, grandson of Y. B. Saranealis to W. S. Weerasooria, dated 2 October, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">1987, and quoted in Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 166.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">155 \u2018H. L. Mowlis Commonwealth Naturalisation: Oath taken this 19th April 1911, before Hugh <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Milman, P. M., 19 April 1911.\u2019 QS787\/1\/2, QSA. This was unusual for an unmarried man, but <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">necessary in order to own property. Mowlis\u2019s naturalisation was no doubt facilitated by his being <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">legally a British subject, as was Heriberto Zarcal\u2019s on the grounds of being a Spanish subject (see <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Anna Shnukal, Chapter Four, this volume).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">156 \u2018Protector of Aboriginals, Thursday Island, to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, Brisbane,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">24 February 1915.\u2019 A\/58768 (restricted), QSA.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">157 He may have left the state permanently, as there is no record of his death in Queensland.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">158 Lock, A. C. C., Destination Barrier Reef, pp. 134\u20135. Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">in the nineteenth century.\u2019 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhala settlers of Thursday Island.\u2019 Ceylon Observer, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">3 September, 1978, quoted in Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 169.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">159 Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 6 April, 1999.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">160 Amcia already had two sons, Arthur and Peter (Petrie) Ahmat, born to her husband before 1919.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">All the children were raised together and the girls \u2014 Mercia (Mercy), named for Punchi Hewa <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Mendis\u2019s wife, Evelyn, Juliet (Julie), and Portia \u2014 signed Ahmat. The couple\u2019s first son, Paul,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">was born on 18 September, 1923, but died tragically young on 4 January, 1926.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">161Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 168.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">162 Siripala and Nissanka, born in Galle on 29 August, 1919, and 2 April, 1924, respectively. Both<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">sons subsequently married into families associated with jewellery in South-East Asia and each pursued a<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">successful career in Australia. See also Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 192.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">163 Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 1 November, 2001. Amara remembers that every week See Kee, who <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">grew vegetables such as Chinese cabbage and lettuce, would send vegetables to her father-in-law <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018as a mark of respect and gratitude\u2019.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">164 \u2018Albert Edward Kelly, Acting Head Teacher, State School, Thursday Island, to Director of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Education, Department of Public Instruction, 9 March 1942, re Admission of Coloured Children.\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">EDU\/Z2676, QSA. The full text reads: \u2018The races represented on the Island, in addition to <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Europeans, are: Chinese, Japanese, Torres Strait islanders and mainland Aboriginals while <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the crosses comprise: China-White, Islander-White, Japanese-Islander, Japanese-Malay, Malay-<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Islander, Malay-Aboriginal in varying proportions while many are of doubtful origin. In addition <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">there are a couple of families, white predominating, containing Southern European or Cingalese <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">blood. These live as white people and are accepted in white society together with Chinese and <\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">caste [sic] Chinese-White and to a lesser degree the Japanese whose children are not yet matured.\u2019 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">Despite the authorities\u2019 desire to assign each resident of Thursday Island to a rigid \u2018racial\u2019 category,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">many decisions were ad hoc and mutable. With decisions rarely based entirely on descent or <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">community acceptance, it is the unclear cases that permit a more nuanced explanation than <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">heretofore (see Regina Ganter, Chapter Nine, this volume).<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">200 Navigating Boundaries<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">165 Hill, E. \u2018Vignettes of Thursday Island\u2019s picturesque scenes: where a happy polyglot people seek <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">for pearlshell.\u2019 The Queensland Times, 17 June, 1933.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">166 \u2018W. D. Wimalasundera vs Saris, 24 October 1890.\u2019 CPS 13D\/P3, QSA.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">167 Information about the temple location from Punchi Hewa Mendis to Amara Mendis. Amara was <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">shown the tree when she arrived on Thursday Island after World War II, but it had been stripped <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">of its leaves and died shortly afterwards. It had once been quite tall. Amara Mendis, pers. comm., <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1 November, 2001, 21 February, 2004. According to Siri Mendis, pers. comm., 31 October, 2001, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">the Buddhist temple had disappeared by the time of his arrival on Thursday Island in 1937. Its <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">date of construction is unknown but it may have been the first Buddhist centre in Australia.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">168 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 59.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">169 Ibid.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">170 The Quetta, on a voyage from Brisbane to London via Colombo, sank on the night of 28 February, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1890, off Muri (Mt Adolphus Island) not far from Thursday Island after having struck a submerged <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">rock. Singe, J. 1989. The Torres Strait: people and history. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">p. 94; Foley, J. C. H. 1990. The Quetta: Queensland\u2019s worst disaster: the story of the wreck of RMS <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Quetta in Torres Strait in 1890. Aspley: Nairana.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">171 England, A. \u2018Thursday Island has memorial Cathedral to the Quetta.\u2019 Telegraph (Brisbane), <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">29 February, 1940. p. 11.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">172 M. Sasaki, presumably a Japanese, served as the Buddhist priest on Thursday Island in 1900. <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Post Office, 1900, p. 540.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">173 This in itself was atypical of the Sri Lankan migrations to other parts of Queensland. Those <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018who settled down on the mainland were soon lost to sight in the cultures that surrounded them,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">but on Thursday Island they established a community which long retained its identity.\u2019 Swan, B.,<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">\u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 58.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">174 In 1897, for example, Saris and De Silva donated money to the Jubilee Benevolent Fund; and, in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">1903, the Sri Lankans made the attractive bamboo screens and other decorations for an Arcadian <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">F\u00eate lucky dip to raise money for fencing the Anglican Church grounds. Pilot, 3 July, 1897, and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">24 January, 1903.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">175 Torres Strait Pilot, 1 February, 1902. p. 1.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">176 Hill, E., \u2018Vignettes of Thursday Island\u2019s picturesque scenes\u2019.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">177 Amara Mendis, pers. comm., 16 April, 2004.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">178Weerasooria, W. S., Links Between Sri Lanka and Australia, p. 164.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">179 Pilot, 8 December, 1928.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">180 Souvenir Program dated 24 May, 1935, \u2018Federal Hotel Register 10 June 1901\u2013c.1956.\u2019 p. 258.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Royal Historical Society of Queensland Library.<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\">181 Swan, B., \u2018Sinhalese emigration to Queensland in the nineteenth century\u2019, p. 5<\/span>9.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-43264 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Government-Residence-1897-535x400.jpg\" alt=\"Government Residence, 1897\" width=\"535\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Government Residence, 1897.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Courtesy of John Oxley Library, Brisbane (Item No. 49817).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">This text is taken from Navigating Boundaries: The Asian diaspora in<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Torres Strait, edited by Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">published 2017 by ANU eView, The Australian National University,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">Canberra, Australia.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 20px; color: #000000;\">dx.doi.org\/10.22459\/NB.11.2017.07<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island \u2013 By Stanley J. Sparkes and Anna Shnukal Introduction The dismantling of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s, allied with periodic civil strife in their homeland, brought significant numbers of Sri Lankan immigrants to Australia. Few Australians, however, are aware that, a century before, hundreds [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[15507],"class_list":{"0":"post-43247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-stanley-j-sparkes","9":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.7.1 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Sri Lankan Settlers of Thursday Island \u2013 By Stanley J. 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