The surprising history of South Sea islanders who were kidnapped and tricked - and occasionally recruited - into employment on the sugar fields of Queensland in northern Australia in the 1800's and early 1900's. It is an especially poignent story in that this population was later expelled back to the islands they came from - if they were lucky - where they became for a second time outcasts - people who had been given up for dead and whose right to inherit traditional lands and privileges had been usurped by others.

There is a troubled history of relations between the indigenous and European peoples of northern Australia, and the introduction of a Pacific islander population into this mix added further complications. But it is a story that until recently wasn't told. Like the Tasmanian Aborigines who were popularly believed to be extinct (but they weren't), the popularly known story of the islanders is that they were the victims of a few bad men, that it had been a very minor affair, and that there weren't any islanders left behind in Australia.

But the truth was that the trade in island labour was a major factor in the development of the sugar industry in Queensland, and of the State generally, and that far from being in issue 'dead and buried', thousands of islanders still lived in Queensland, preserving their separate identity, and in many cases living on the fringes of mainstream culture and opportunity. The real story here, of course, is not about the islanders, but about a country (and a mind set) that could make an entire people invisible even though they lived amongst them.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of the Pacific or of Australia, and particularly for the light it sheds on racial attitudes and relations between European Australians and both the islander community and the indigenous Australian peoples. ( )