SSR3: Secondary Source Report on Celmara Pocock’s Aborigines, Islanders and Hula Girls in Great Barrier Reef Tourism by Sebastian Mauger-Hollmann

Complete citation:

Pocock, Celmara. “Aborigines, Islanders and Hula Girls in Great Barrier Reef Tourism.” The Journal of Pacific History 49.2 (2014)

Key Words: Great Barrier Reef, Aboriginal, labour, Pacific, tourism, performance

Brief Overview: Pocock’s paper presents an analysis of historic tourist ephemera to suggest that Aboriginal people are essentially invisible at the Great Barrier Reef, despite their role in establishing the tourism industry. 

Summary of key points:

·         The Aboriginal people rarely receive acknowledgement and go unrewarded for their involvement in the tourism industry.

·         Early tourists to the Great Barrier Reef were primarily motivated to appreciate the scenery and what nature had to offer, however the Aboriginal people were just seen as part of the nature; many Aboriginal settlements became popular tourist destinations

·         Because much of Aboriginal culture is not coastal, much of the Torres Strait Islander, and other Pacific cultures were appropriated alongside Aboriginal culture as to promote tourism.

Important Quotations:

“Although Indigenous Islanders in Australia are most often recognised as those from the Torres Strait Islands at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland is also home to the descendants of indentured labourers from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and nearby Pacific locations who worked in early colonial sugar and cotton industries” (Pocock, 2014).

“Aboriginal people were required to relinquish their own cultures, but simultaneously required to learn dances and songs related to those of the Pacific” (Pocock, 2014).

“South Sea maidens represented in Reef advertising brochures and commercial tourism are predominantly, if not exclusively, white” (Pocock, 2014).

“Aboriginal people are thus rendered invisible in Great Barrier Reef tourist landscapes that are reconfigured as part of the Pacific, because Aborigines challenge the Pacific ideal” (Pocock, 2014).

Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

The paper is helpful to our group or individual project as it addresses the how poorly the Aboriginal people were treated during the rise of the tourism industry. It also shows how other cultural practices, such as hula girls and dances, were appropriated to increase interest in Aboriginal culture.