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[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪ ♪ [ Conversing indistinctly ] ♪ -Broome is a tiny town of around 15,000 people on the remote northwest coast of Australia.

It's a stunning place with endless beaches, incredible food, and anything and everything for the adventure traveler.

Broome is actually closer to Singapore than Sydney, and it's a place known for its longstanding cultural diversity.

That diversity all revolves around the pearling industry here, the labor they needed to keep it going, and the oyster Pinctada maxima, the largest oyster in the world.

At one point, the oysters coming out of here were responsible for around 80% of the world's buttons, as well as mother-of-pearl used for cutlery handles, mother-of-pearl inlays, and more.

Before the pearling industry arrived, there was of course tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal history here.

For these people, that pearl shell, not the pearl, was an identifier for their culture, their history, and their traditions.

So we're starting out with Johani Mamid, a Yawuru, Karajarri, Nyulnyul, and Bardi man.

And he's the owner of Mabu Buru Tours, an Aboriginal-owned company that introduces his guests to the many layers of Aboriginal culture here.

-My old people, my ancestors -- we often say old people when we're referring to our ancestors.

-Yeah.

-My old people basically used to walk around with a ceremonial artifact, which is a pearl shell -- a pearl shell hanging off a belt made out of hair.

And so the men would wear that.

There was art on the pearl shell.

And so when people came through here in the earlier days, saw Aboriginal people with their pearl shell, "Hey, what's that?

Where did you get that?"

And found out that these pearl shells actually came from our waters in this area right here.

-Okay.

-And so, also, a nice location, with Broome being a bit of a peninsula, covered by, right next to a bay and all the mangroves and everything, and obviously the habitat for the pearl shells.

The people from this whole northwest region are the pearl-shell people.

-Yeah.

-And so any pearl shells you find as ceremonial, like, you know, in photos and videos of Indigenous people throughout Australia, we know that they've come from this region.

So we've traded with our neighbors who we've always had a respectful relationship with, and they've given us something for that trade, you see?

So, and, then, they've traded with their neighbors and, then, it's gone on and on and on, or gifted, and then it's gone all the way right past Uluru, down to New South Wales, right in South Australia.

And these pearl shells -- -So, like, this trade route of exchange going on.

-That's right.

-And in Yawuru life, those day-to-day objects held an important role in passing the community's history down for generation after generation.

-In our culture, in Aboriginal culture here in Australia, you'll often hear about storytelling, singing, dancing, and art.

The reason why is because we never had a library in my culture.

-Mm-hmm.

-And so in our culture, the closest thing to a library is our art.

-Gotcha.

-And so our art might be on our artifacts.

-Okay.

-So our boomerangs or our shields and things like that.

And so we have a -- walking around with something that kind of tells the story.

-Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

I asked you if you wanted to set them down.

You said, "Nope.

You know what?

I always hold on to these, because it's just what we --" -Yeah.

So this is what we use.

So when we tell a story, quite often that story might have a song.

And the reason why, you imagine talking to kids who, you know, a thousand years ago, they were always in school.

The school was wherever they were.

So they're always learning.

-I love that.

Yeah, yeah.

-[ Laughs ] So, you imagine telling stories, and you're telling a million stories, and all of a sudden, it gets pretty boring, eh?

And they get mixed up.

And so but if we have a story that has a song, well, it's not hard to mix it up, and it makes it interesting, especially if that song comes with a dance.

-I love that practical sort of, "How are we gonna get the kids to remember..." -That's right.

-"...our history," yeah.

-You know, one of the other things that we don't really talk about enough in this day and age is that actually, you know, kids and adults -- everybody learns better in different ways.

You know, storytelling, me telling you a lot of things, might not necessarily be suitable for you to learn.

So let's sing a song.

Let's do a dance.

And you learn, you know, because the way you think is different, you know?

So people are different, and different techniques work in different ways.

So if we're combining them all in how we share and teach, then we've got a better chance of our next generation learning what they need to learn as a part of survival and, you know, practicing and knowing who they are.

-Well, and in stark contrast to the Western, certainly my European, American background, where it's... -Yeah.

-..."Here's your lesson book.

You're gonna learn this stuff in this book the way we teach it to you.

There you go."

And so I love this sort of advanced teaching technology that's been going on for 30-- How long do you talk about people being here, like, tens of thousands of years?

-People often talk about 40,000 years.

-Yeah.

-The reason why 40,000 years exists as a number is because of Mungo Man.

Mungo Man is a fossilized skeleton that was found, like, in Mungo Lake, I think it is.

-Okay.

-There was a Mungo Man, and then there was a woman, as well.

And they've dated those back to be about 40,000 years.

Then, in the Pilbara, I think it was, they found an ax or a tool of some kind that actually dated back to 60,000 years.

-Oh, wow.

-So people used the number 60,000 years old.

But, hey, why does it stop there?

Just because we don't have evidence that goes back further.

-Totally right, yeah.

-So, we say more than 60,000 years.

-Yeah.

-But for me, what we say in our culture is we've been in these places ever since the beginning.

-Johani took us over to a quiet, little bay on the edge of town for a little dip in the water and a picnic, and then we jump back in to the topic at hand.

Johani sees his role as a tour operator in part to show tourists what Yawuru life was like before Europeans arrived here and also to help explain what it's like now for his culture by showcasing the struggles and the successes of trying to blend 60,000 years of tradition with modern life.

-The new world that we're in now, trying to look after country, can learn from the old world, as well.

Part of what we do in tourism isn't trying to convert people.

-Yeah.

-We're just helping to give them that understanding that I mentioned earlier.

-Yeah.

-And if we're doing that the wrong way, they might get the wrong understanding and, you know, maybe get aggressive against the rest of the world because they learned about our mistreatment in our history.

So we make sure they learn, "Hey, look, we're learning from what we've done in the past.

and let's make sure we do the right thing moving forward."

Things like that.

But we have to do it while living in these two worlds, maintaining a balance in these two worlds that we live in, this traditional, cultural part of who we are... -Mm-hmm.

-...but also trying to maintain an economic survival just like everybody else in this world.

-Yeah.

-And so we're trying to maintain a balance, and we're also in an era now where people have a choice.

You have options.

-Right.

-You can do this and just do this.

-Yeah.

-You know?

Just live the way everybody else does because no one's forcing you to do that.

Or you can do this, but then -- or this rather -- but then you struggle economically.

-Right.

Right.

Right.

-Yeah.

-Not one or the other, but both.

-That's right.

-And now we fast-forward to the 1800s, when Europeans were here and the pearling industry had started to take hold.

But it started in a dark place, with most of the labor coming from Aboriginal communities in the area, a significant portion of that labor coming from forcing or even kidnapping men, women, and children into working in all aspects of the industry, a practice known as blackbirding.

But as the industry grew, pearlers started looking for more labor from other countries to work alongside the local Aboriginal populations, drawing from places like China, Malaysia, Philippines, Timor, and Japan, where there was plenty of skilled labor willing to leave home and come to Broome to try and strike it rich.

And the hub of all of these cultures was in Chinatown.

It was the social, commercial, and cultural heart of Broome and the center of the pearling industry.

Around 2017, Broome invested millions of dollars in a revitalization project of Chinatown.

Part of that project involved public art celebrating the diverse history here.

That brings us to Chris and Robyn Maher, who run a tour company called Salty Plum Social, giving visitors all manner of deep dives into Broome's unique cultural history.

And Chris was kind enough to take me around town to show off all of the great, new public art that came from that revitalization project.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Right.

Uh-huh.

The sand.

Okay.

-Do you know this term?

-No, I don't.

-M-i-d-d-e-n.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, it's about 50,000 years' evidence of Yawuru habitation around here... -Oh, wow.

-...Yawuru people fishing in that bay... -Yeah.

-...taking shellfish to a communal dining area, eating shells, discarding shells, a bit of wind and sand, more fishing, more communal dining.

more wind and sand, and over an era of somewhere around 50,000 years, that hill has risen from nothing to that high.

And the reason there's nothing growing up there is because it's just crushed shell.

That's all it is.

-Oh, wow.

That's really cool.

-It is extraordinary.

So, should we go for a wander?

-Yeah.

Each street has a theme related to Broome history and all of the cultures that called this place home over the years, and there are several art pieces throughout the neighborhood, like laser-cut pillars and streetlight covers done in a Japanese motif, statues dedicated to the founders of the first cultured pearl farm in Australia at Kuri Bay, a sculpture highlighting the connection of Yawuru people with the pearl shell, a life-size bronze statue of a hard-hat pearl diver, a multilingual street sign calling out all of the languages spoken here, and the giant "Fusion" sculpture at the entrance to Chinatown.

Normally I wouldn't be super keen on a sculpture with so many different elements in it.

-Yeah.

-But there's something about the way this one is done where they're so subtle.

-Yeah.

-They're blending in really nicely, and they all have meaning.

-Yeah, yeah.

-I think it's so well-done.

And it's like, I mean, I just went through this whole experience.

It was like, "Oh, wait, no, there's shells there.

Oh, wait, there's... -You can see so many things.

-Yeah.

And the wood and the cording.

-But your observation of all those different, you know, lots of elements -- -Yeah.

-It's kind of good because that reflects the pearling industry.

There were so many elements, you know, so many cultures and so many things that happened in that industry, so... -Yeah.

Isn't it amazing, this confluence of all these different people, all these different moments in time... -Yeah.

-...and events in history coming together in this tiny, little place... -Yeah, yeah.

-...to make it what it is.

-It's extraordinary, isn't it?

-Yeah.

All right.

-Okay.

-He also showed us a series of benches here that highlight a famous and illegal gambling game here called "Chee Fah."

-This is a Chee Fah riddle, and this illegal game of Chee Fah was played here in Broome twice every day from the early 1900s... -Wow.

-...to the mid-1970s.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah.

-And they still played.

-Isn't that crazy?

-That's pretty funny.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-I like that.

I like that.

Yeah.

-That brings us to Douglas Fong and his daughter, Kira Fong.

Doug's great-grandfather came to Australia from Hong Kong in the mid-1800s.

Doug's grandfather, Louey Ling Tack, moved to Broome in around 1917 to open up a pearl shop.

The Fong family would become one of the best-known families in town and were involved in all manner of businesses, including a general store, which was one of the main social hubs for the diverse population of Chinatown.

Doug's uncle actually ran one of the main two Chee Fah riddle games in town for decades, up until the mid-1980s, and Doug helped design the Chee Fah benches we saw earlier.

-The seats over there, you can see it's eroding, "Chee Fah" eroding, yeah.

-Oh, they used to run those games?

Uh-huh.

-He was obviously bald-headed.

Had been a tailor.

-So, he was called "Bald Headed Tailor"?

-Yep.

-That's a great nickname.

-We called him "Gungun."

-Doug's uncle ran his Chee Fah game twice a day, six days a week, from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.

But officially, gambling was illegal, and it did not escape the local constabulary's attention.

So, once a month, the police would show up.

-But they were okay with it.

-Right.

-But they were obliged to say, Look, look, mate.

You're running a gambling den."

-Yeah.

-He would say, "No, I'm running a recreational facility for sailors."

-Yeah.

-They would say, "Okay.

You're all right."

You know?

-This back-and-forth between the police and his uncle would carry on for years and years.

That's so cool.

I love that, that sort of "below the surface going on in the neighborhood" kind of thing, but yet everybody knows it's going on... -Exactly.

-...and it's a nod and a wink.

A nod and a wink?

Right.

And Broome's gonna do what Broome's gonna do, yeah.

-It wasn't Wild West.

It was something in between.

-Okay.

-Mild West... -Mild West... -...if you like, rather than Wild West.

-Yeah.

But during the heyday of the pearling industry here, there were also racial tensions.

-Growing up, there was a big -- It was either you were colored or you were white.

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-Colored or white?

-Colored or white.

And of course they had the Common Gate, where Aboriginal people were locked out of town.

-The Common Gate, a long fence with a gate, lasted until 1954.

-There used to be a fence, and all Indigenous had to be out of town on the other side of that fence by 6:00 at night.

We had lots of Indigenous customers here.

-Yeah.

-They loved coming here 'cause my mum and dad would talk to them.

-Oh, but anywhere else they would go -- -And be polite to them.

-Yeah.

-Rather than going to the big shops.

-That were owned by white people... -Owned by white people.

-...where it's like, "What are you doing in here?

You can't come in here."

-Yeah.

-While Chinatown was the hub for all of the various cultures mixing together in town, it was the pearling ships, which were called "luggers," that became a sort of cultural crucible, where people of all different backgrounds were out at sea for months on end, fishing for pearl oysters, forming strong friendships with each other while doing highly dangerous and often deadly work in the tight quarters of a pearling lugger.

Okay.

Okay.

Yep.

I heard about it, yeah.

That brings us to the big Shinju Matsuri Festival going on in town right now, which is in part why we're here this time of year.

This huge annual festival all started from the melting pot of workers out on the luggers, who would miss their major cultural celebrations while out at sea for months on end.

-Japanese.

Yes.

-Oh!

Mm-hmm.

-The camps, yeah.

-Okay.

-Yeah, that's right.

-Oh, man!

Yeah!

It was this decades of blending festivals that ultimately led to today's Shinju Matsuri Festival, which started in 1971.

The festival opens at the end of August, with the "Welcome to Country" by Yawuru elders and the waking of Sammy the Dragon.

And it continues for two weeks with things like the cultural Float Parade, the Carnival of Nations, the Chinatown Feast, Arts Awards, and the big closing event that we were lucky enough to get to -- the Long Table Dinner out on Broome's famous Cable Beach.

♪ [ Laughs ] That's pretty great.

If you make it to Broome -- and you most definitely should -- you would be hard-pressed to find a more festive time of year to be here, when all of Broome's wide and varied cultures are on full display during Shinju Matsuri.

Our next stop is up the coast 120 miles to Cygnet Bay, to explore life in this remote outpost of northwestern Australia.

And the trip itself up the coastline to get there is a thing of raw beauty.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Whew.

Yeah.

Our first stop is Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, one of Australia's best-known and oldest pearl farms, and their story is inextricably linked to the Bardi and Jawi Aboriginal communities that have called the land and sea here home for countless generations.

Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm was founded in the 1940s by Dean Brown, a founding story that should be turned into a movie.

James Brown is founder Dean Brown's grandson and is the current managing director of the farm.

He has a degree in marine biology, and he also grew up here.

-So, you know, um, it was just an outpost, and it was a self-sufficient outpost with, you know, fruit and vegetables and chooks and ducks and goats and cows.

And, you know, we would kill our own, you know, livestock for meat and -- -Yeah.

-You know what I mean?

Like, it's just a self-sustaining place.

And that's what I grew up with, and I just assumed that the whole world was like this.

-Right, yeah.

It's all relative.

-Mm.

-So, young James has a bunch of buddies to run around with up here and...?

-Yeah.

Yeah.

And I still do.

Have you met Terry Hunter?

-No, I don't think so.

-Aw, damn it, man.

-Yeah.

-So, like, Terry does the cultural tours here.

-Oh, okay.

-And, yeah, he's probably one of my oldest mates.

-Oh, yeah?

-We went to school together.

His parents were fantastic.

I literally spent my childhood either kind of out, you know, spearing and fishing and exploring with him and his extended family or literally at their place, you know, kind of eating food off the fire.

But, yeah, it was a great childhood.

-But this place started with Dean's grandfather and that epic founding story.

-So, Broome, in the last shelling boom, was the place where people came, you know, often with almost nothing, but could make a fortune if the cards landed the right way.

-So, kind of like the gold rush in the States sort of.

-Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

So, yes, it wasn't about natural pearls.

It was all about the shell.

So, it was literally about how many kilos or tons of pearl shell you could collect.

But at the same time, they say that one in every sort of 5,0000 or 10,000 shell does have a natural pearl.

And back then, if you happened to find one... -Yeah.

-...that could be worth, like, a lifetime's wages.

-Did you say one in -- how many?

-One in, like, 5,000 to 10,000.

-You did say that.

-Mm.

-It's not many.

-Wow.

-So you've got to go through a lot of shell.

-That's crazy.

-And you're picking these things up one at a time, in a hard hat, being drifted across the boat.

You know, like, it's not the kind of thing you're gonna to do to try and find pearls.

-No.

But if you did find them, then, you know, it was -- They were extraordinarily valuable.

Extraordinarily valuable.

-Yeah.

-And to the point where there's just fantastic stories about what happened to those pearls, because often they wouldn't necessarily kind of make it back.

-Yeah.

No, I get what you're saying.

-All kinds of snide pearl stories about, you know, kind of people would find them and try and sneak them and then, you know.

-Yeah.

-Because that was then, they're set for life, you know?

They got away with it.

At the Second World War, when the Japanese invading forces were threatening the northern Australia and bombed the hell out of Darwin and Broome... -Yeah.

-In fact, I think they dropped more bombs on Darwin than they did in Pearl Harbor.

-Really?

-Oh, yeah.

-Oh, wow.

-Yeah, it was a -- People don't realize, but the invasion into Australia was well and truly on its way.

-Yeah.

-The Japanese had a reputation for commandeering local vessels and using them to help transport troops.

So the Australian Navy decided to either sink or burn almost all of the pearling luggers, which had a devastating effect on the pearling industry.

-So there were only a few of them that survived by being sort of sailed away.

And my grandfather bought one of those.

So he -- he started back into Broome, and it was one of only about 12 luggers, I think, in total that really ever got going after the Second World War.

When he got to Broome -- So you imagine the industry is completely dead now.

There's just nothing left.

No boats left.

-Post-war.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

So the place is reeling.

It was going to quickly fade with the onset of plastics.

You know, the whole thing was shifting, and he just would have had no idea.

So, he puts together a bit of a crew, and they -- and they start, you know, fishing for pearl shell again.

But quite early on, he bumped into an Aboriginal guy by the name of David Wigan in Broome.

-Yeah.

-And David Wigan is Bardi -- was a Bardi elder from just over here, just Ardyaloon, and his family were living at Sunday Island off the coast at the time on a mission out there.

These boats were also the way that people moved around the coastline.

So, a lot of the Aboriginal people would actually use the opportunity to go from one place to another place by lugger.

-Oh.

-Yeah.

So that wasn't uncommon, you see?

And so David Wigan, of course, probably saw the opportunity to strike up a friendship with my grandfather to help him.

-'Cause he had a nice boat.

-Cruise back to Sunday Island and catch up with his family.

-Yeah.

-Which is what they did.

And of course, he was saying, "Oh, yeah, you got to come up.

You know, there's so much shell in King Sound and da, da, da."

Said, "Great, great, great" and all the rest of it.

So, off they went.

And, you know, they ended up working with David and his family and, you know, the whole Bardi people pretty much.

And he would use them almost exclusively for his crew.

And so they'd cruise around and have all these incredible adventures.

It wasn't all just pearling.

Some of it was pearling, some of it was trochus, some it was croc shooting, some it was building lighthouses, some, you know, all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff.

-Yeah.

Are you kidding?

That's great.

-Yeah, yeah.

So, they had a, you know, they had this very longstanding relationship, which went right to the end of both of their lives, really.

But he was on the ground or literally on the water when the -- when the Americans kind of first brought over the effort to start cultured pearling, which is 200 kilometers that way at Kuri Bay.

-Kuri Bay is Australia's first pearl farm.

And through a series of fortunate events, Dean and his crew got the contract to be Kuri Bay's supply boat.

Dean soon saw what Kuri Bay was doing with their pearl farm, and, Dean being Dean, saw an opportunity.

He convinced his son Lyndon, James' uncle, to come up from Perth to give farming pearls a shot.

So, with absolutely no knowledge of how to do this, Lyndon and a few local Bardi men get dropped off at Cygnet Bay and try to scrabble together a pearl farm.

A year later, they were already seeing results.

That marked the beginning of Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm.

But everything that happens here comes back to the uniqueness of the place itself.

-You've seen how this tide rolls in and out.

-Yeah.

-So, you know, six hours in, six hours out -- we've got a 12-meter variation.

It's a -- -It's crazy.

-It is a literal tsunami hitting this coast twice a day.

It's just happening in 12 hours, right?

-Yeah.

-Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

So, that huge tidal variation creates massive currents.

And so that's just moving all of this stuff around, right?

And so there's no coincidence that in this hugely energetic, the most energetic tropical marine environment, you've also got the most energetic pearl oyster.

This place, this environment, you know, this coastline, its link to the -- literally its link to the moon -- is why Pinctada maxima is here, which is why we are here.

-Gotcha.

Yeah.

No kidding.

-It's why the Aboriginal people literally kind of, you know, have their culture so tightly linked to it.

And it just gets deeper and deeper and deeper the more you actually understand the way that the environment connects.

-It astonishes me what a hell of amount of work it is to do this.

-Yeah, yeah.

That's right.

I mean, and every step of the process.

So it's really complicated.

There's a lot of science to it.

There's a lot of hard work.

-Yeah.

-And you've got to get every step in the process right.

You've got to, you know, you've got to -- you've got to dive to pick these things up one at a time.

You've got to keep them healthy and happy the whole time.

You've got to prep them for the pearl seeding.

You've got to do all that with people that know exactly how to, you know, seed pearls with graft tissue and so on.

And then you've got to get it all right, even to the point where the shape will be often dictated by things we do or we do not do well.

So, we're trying to grow a round pearl, but we don't get many of them, right?

-Yeah.

-But if we get it right, perfectly right, we do everything right, we get it in the right location, we handle the shell the right way, we do everything right, we might get a round pearl.

-Yeah.

-But in fact, the majority of the time we don't.

We get a drop or something with a circle around it or a broch and, you know, da, da, da, da, da, da.

And these are all just literally telling the story of what that pearl shell has gone through over two years.

-Yeah.

-And so the end result is this, you know, is this pearl that, you know, someone like me that's been in the industry forever, you look at it and we see everything that's gone into it.

-Yeah.

-Which is really, you know, which I find kind of fascinating.

-I love that they have all these different shapes because it represents -- -Yeah.

-In its own way, it represents nature, it represents this place rather than this perfect thing.

-Yeah.

That's right.

The pursuit of perfection.

But rarely achieved.

-I equate it to -- I used to be in the Persian rug business for a while, and everyone who was new to rugs thinks, "Oh, I got to buy one with the most knots per square inch."

Those are not the most sought-after rugs.

It's these tribal rugs that have all these different anomalies that show the hand of the person in it.

And to me, this shows the hand of the place, the ocean in it.

And I like that a lot, actually.

-Yeah, I do, too.

And I mean, you know, I think that's part of the reason why we opened the farm to the public.

-They opened the pearl farm to the public in 2009, offering adventure tours, Bardi Jawi-led cultural tours.

You can watch pearl harvests, stay in eco-lodges, eat fish caught right out of the bay, all of this turning what was traditionally a very secretive business into a transparent and educational one.

-We're as far away as we possibly could be from the jewelry stores of New York and London and so on.

But it's got such a great story to tell whether or not, whether or not you are just interested in jewelry or if you're interested in the cultural aspect of it or the place or whatever it might be.

-Yeah.

-You know, the pearling industry in this part of the country is becoming something that people seek out.

But not only does it represent this jewelry piece that, you know, obviously is special to them in their moment in life.

But, of course, it's got this big background.

-Comes with this story.

-Yeah, where it comes from.

-Yeah.

And a huge part of that story is about the Bardi and Jawi people, who have lived here since the beginning on Ardyaloon, also known as One Arm Point, which is just a couple miles around the bay from here.

These are the same people that worked hand in hand with James' grandfather, Dean, his uncle Lyndon, and James himself.

It's where Dean's buddy David Wigan was from.

It's where Lyndon's friends that seeded those first pearl shells with him are from.

It's where James' friend Terry is from.

According to James, there is no Cygnet Bay Pearl farm without the Bardi Jawi community at One Arm Point.

And this is Robert Wigan from One Arm Point.

He's also David Wigan's youngest son.

Robert is a pearl-shell carver, and those carved shells called "riji" have patterns that signify status, identity, and hold sacred meanings specific to the Bardi, Jawi, Yawuru and other saltwater groups from this coastal region.

Robert brought one of his favorite riji along for our chat.

Yeah.

Why'd you pick the morning star to show?

-Wow!

I love that, though.

-Yeah.

-Well, and you survive on the ocean?

-That's perfect, because everyone here in the best way has been talking about, and it's a legitimate thing, the craziness of this huge tide here.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Second-biggest tide in the world.

Which amazes me that your ancestors were able to do all of this on those... ...on those rafts.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Did they ever have a sail or no?

-Just paddling away, yeah.

-Yeah.

-They had the brains.

They knew when the tides were gonna help them.

Bingo.

Would there be much contact with your people with, like, the Malaysians and the Japanese or... Oh, they were on Sunday Island.

Oh, they'd come together and hang out?

-Yeah.

-All these different cultures together.

That's -- I mean, to me, as an outsider, that seems pretty cool.

We headed back to Cygnet Bay to do a deep dive into the modern world of pearl farming.

And, spoiler alert, it's still a hell of a lot of work.

I'm talking with Jordyn Kalman.

She works here as a tour guide, giving tours about all things pearling.

-We have about 90,000 shells in the bay.

-Oh, my God!

-Takes them 4 to 6 weeks to work from the beginning to the end of the paddles.

And they're out there almost every single day doing this all year round.

-I had no idea.

-Even in the wet season.

The only time the boat's really not out there is if there's a cyclone and the water conditions are too rough.

But, really, you're out there for ten hours a day, sunrise to sunset.

People don't realize how much work it takes just to get one singular pearl.

So, the turnaround time is usually, it could be 5 to 6 years for a hatchery shell, even, so... And we're cleaning them still once a month.

So, so much effort goes into just getting maybe one pearl.

-So, one shell gets cleaned somewhere around 60 times until it comes out.

-Yeah.

And then you may get an empty shell, as well.

So, after all that work, you might not get anything.

-Oh, wow.

-Yeah.

-So, this is the research center here?

-Yep.

So, it's the hatchery and the research center.

So, it's all kind of all in one.

So, these are our elderly shells, if you will.

So, they're all about 8 to 10 years old.

And this is what we harvest on our tours for people.

So, basically, at the end of this, they'll be destined for the dinner table, we like to say.

-Right.

So, it's a two-year cycle, basically, where we are seeding and reseeding oysters.

So, it takes two years to develop one pearl, and they can do a maximum amount of three per cycle.

So, they're all in their last pearl.

So, we'll actually pick one if you want to see which one has a great pearl inside.

-Let's do it, yeah, yeah.

-If you want to do the honors, you can pick which shell that we do.

-Let's do that one right there.

-All right.

-All right.

-Let's take this guy over.

So, typically, if I were a technician, if I were the one actually performing this surgery, we would have this black peg actually inserted inside to prop the shell open.

-Okay.

-Then we'd be going in with tools that look almost like dentist tools, and we're going and doing our operation.

We're able to seed, reseed, and then put them back out in the water.

-And then put them back.

-Exactly.

But today, like I said, these guys are all kind of on the end of their life cycle.

So, we'll be doing a full harvest.

And my tool will be the butter knife.

-The butter knife.

-I'm going to cut along the flat edge of the shell right here.

And I'm going to sever something called the abductor muscle.

So, the abductor muscle is the only thing actually attached to both sides.

And it gives the oyster a clamp mechanism.

So, that's how it opens and closes.

So, once I sever it the oyster will be able to just fall open really nicely.

There we go.

So, all the tension just really released.

-Yeah.

-I can crack open the oyster at its hinge.

This is the inside of our oyster.

Basically, a natural pearl occurs when something gets inside that irritates the shell.

-Yeah.

-It's actually bigger than a grain of sand.

People do think that.

-I totally did.

-A grain of sand turns into a pearl?

-I would say a grain of sand, yeah.

-Exactly.

But these guys are actually found on the ocean's floor, and they will burrow in the sand, so they're actually quite used to sand getting inside.

-Yeah.

-So, the irritation will have to be slightly bigger.

So, that's when we see worms, parasites, things trying to actually get inside and eat the shell.

-Yeah.

-That's what will be a natural pearl.

-Gotcha.

-Yeah.

-No, I didn't know that at all.

-Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, something will get inside.

And this leaflet material that we're looking at right here?

-Yeah.

-This is mantle tissue.

Mantle tissue will secrete liquid nacre.

Nacre is the white iridescent stuff that forms the mother-of-pearl shell and an actual pearl.

So, the irritant will basically just get coated in liquid nacre over and over and over until it's fully formed on all sides.

Then the shell will spit it out.

That's why it's actually so rare to find a natural pearl.

It's a 1-in-every-10,000 chance to get a natural.

-Oh!

So, they'll spit it out.

-They will spit it out.

-Yeah.

-And you cannot go diving and find pearls on the ocean floor, if this is going to give anyone any ideas about diving trips.

-All day long, yeah.

-The reason we grow them, we don't dive for them, is because nacre dissolves in saltwater over time.

So, actually, that natural pearl will just dissolve, and it will return to its natural state.

-Oh.

-Yeah.

So, that's why, yeah, we have to grow pearls inside of a live shell.

And that's also why we use secure organs all the way in the back.

It's to reduce the odds of it actually getting spat out, because we want to keep our pearls if we're growing them.

Right, yeah, yeah.

-So, we use something in the back called the gonad.

Now, usually people laugh at that, but it's all right.

-I kept it together, though.

-Thank you, thank you.

I appreciate the maturity.

-Well, it's a rare moment, so, yeah.

-Yes, yes.

So, what we do is we make an incision into our gonad sac, and we implant our irritation.

So, something that's going to trigger the pearl-production process.

-Yeah.

-And that is our nucleus.

So, it's a very tiny spherical piece of shell.

So, we implant our nucleus.

Then, we take a piece of donor mantle tissue from a different shell, implant it.

And we hope that the nucleus will trigger the mantle tissue, coat it with the nacre over those two years that it's out in the bay.

-Yes.

-So, that is how a cultured pearl forms.

-Wow.

All right.

-Yeah, pretty cool.

-That's not what I thought.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

So, it's a very technical process.

That's why it took so long for them to figure it out, because it's almost like oyster IVF.

We're implanting these parts.

-Yeah.

-The host shell's job is just to say nice and healthy.

But we really want to see that pearl production inside the gonad.

-Yeah.

-Now we can go in and see if we have a pearl in our shell.

-Right.

-So, first, what I'll do is I run my fingers under the mantle tissue here, and I check if there's any natural pearls, because we can get cultured and natural at the same time, but never two cultured at once.

So always one seed at a time.

-But you can potentially get multiple in one?

-Yeah, we can get actually any natural pearls that can just come in there, they do form.

So, my coworker Sarah had seven natural pearls and a cultured.

-Oh, my God.

-It's unheard of.

I've never found one.

-It's like winning the oyster lottery.

-It is.

Yeah.

Quite rare.

I said for her to get a lotto ticket after this, after she harvested that shell.

So, I didn't find any natural pearls.

And now I go into the gonad sac, and I feel around to see if I feel anything in here.

Unfortunately, I don't think we have a pearl.

-We drew a blank.

-We drew a blank.

-So, obviously you want to find a pearl, but we're going to maybe eat this later tonight.

-Exactly, exactly.

-You're going to use the shell for all sorts of stuff.

-And I'll show you how we break that down.

-Yeah.

-So, basically, I rip off all these other ooey- gooey organs, just like this.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, that's the nucleus or not the nucleus, the gonad, the mantle tissue, the intestines, every other organ.

That's this really nice, slimy stuff right here.

-Looks great, yeah.

-We send this to Moontide Distillery in Broome, and they make their Pearlers Gin with it.

So that's gin, future gin.

-That's awesome.

-Yeah.

So, that's the pearl meat.

That is what we eat.

Yeah.

So, we just slice it off the shell like this, and you can eat it raw.

So, do you want to try a piece?

-Sure.

-You can go like this.

And then you can do a little cheers.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

-Yeah.

-This is as fresh as you'll ever get it.

-That is.

Yeah.

And that is meaty.

-Yeah.

It's more like a scallop-prawn- abalone somehow mixed together.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

-Yeah.

So, we just give that to our restaurant.

They make a pearl-meat ceviche with it.

-Yeah.

-So, basically, you have dinner and drinks sorted for you.

So, here you go.

-Jacob Rennick has a degree in marine science and spends most of his day out here on the water.

And he's giving us a firsthand look at the oyster farm itself.

You have to pull these up, like, once every 40 days?

Or what was the number?

-Ideally, you'd want to clean them every 4 to 6 weeks, yeah.

So, if you leave them for much longer than that, then the growth that starts to grow on top of the shell themselves will start to inhibit its ability to open up and filter-feed.

-Oh!

-And if it stays that way for too long, then it will essentially starve.

So, what we're doing is pulling them out of the water and hauling it up into the boat, loading it through a pressure-washer machine and cleaning the top and bottom of it, and then essentially manual labor from that point on.

A couple of blokes or girls with chisels, and they'd be smacking off that hard growth on top of the shell, trying to prevent those barnacles from closing on top of the lip.

-Closing it off.

-Yeah.

-It's a crazy amount of work.

-It's a lot of work.

-It really is, yeah.

-So, there we are.

We have it, a 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 8-pocket panel.

And generally when we grow to a full size, like these ones are in here, we'll have them in 6 to 10 pockets.

-Oh, okay.

-Yeah.

So, any more than that, and they start to get a little bit too heavy to be ripping out of the water.

-Right.

Well, and the pocket's just big enough for them to do their "bivalv-ery."

-Absolutely.

So, they do sit pretty much as I've got it right now in the water column.

And they'll just position themselves with the current to be flowing to it.

And that gives them the most amount of nutrient flow through the water.

But in terms of where they sit in the pocket, we've got the bottom down here, and they open up on top, as they would in nature.

They'd attach themselves to the substrate, to the rocks.

And they would sit like this vertically in the water column.

-Yeah, right.

-And you've been here for how long?

-Two seasons.

So, I'd say two years.

-Man, you're in the right place.

-Yeah.

That's right.

There's no better playground for a marine scientist.

-It is a giant playground.

-[ Laughs ] -The next morning, we headed out to spend the day with Rosanna Angus.

Rosanna is a Bardi and Jawi woman from One Arm Point, and her family is from Sunday Island, which is where we're headed today.

She has way too many accolades to list.

She's won awards for her tour group, Oolin Sunday Island tours, including Australia's Top Tour Guide award in 2023.

She has also had a direct role for years in the land and cultural rights and titles for Sunday Island and its surrounding waters.

Her tours focus on the beauty of the place she grew up in and on the inexhaustible depths of her people's cultural heritage here.

And at this point in the episode, it'll come as no surprise to you that she also has heritage from outside of Australia.

-My dad's from Singapore, so his family's from there.

He came over during the pearling days in the early '60s in Broome.

So, he was the last of the hard-hat divers that used to wear the big helmet and the lead boots.

-So, how does a kid -- I mean, is it just sort of the typical way?

Maybe a buddy of his had come over and said, "Hey, you should come over here and make some money doing this"?

I mean, how did he find out about pearling in Broome?

-I think they were calling out for all the Asian pearlers, anyway, all the experience and expertise.

-So, he was already doing it.

-They came over from there because they were already, yeah, they were doing it over in Malaysia, Singapore.

So, they had the skills to come over.

-But it was still a pretty dangerous business back then, even, in the '60s.

-Yeah.

He was a head diver, so he needed a tender.

So, up the top they didn't have the gas tanks back then.

So they used to have the air flow through a pipe.

-Going down there.

-Down to the pipe.

So, every time they needed to move along, he'd have to pull the pipe or the rope to let the tender know, so that the tender would know.

So, the communication was more risky back then, because obviously it was just by pulls and tugs that he had to communicate with.

So, the tender had to know if he was in trouble or not or when he had to come up and all of the above.

-Yeah.

-So, yeah.

So, very dangerous.

And he was out on the ocean for months, a long time, months at a time.

-Ooh, months?

-Months at a time.

They were out on the ocean for months at a time.

I used to wait for him and the jetty when I was 2, 3 years old.

I'd wait for him at the end of that big, old lug at the jetty and wait for the ships or luggers to come.

I'd walk every day and wait for him.

-Oh, man.

-But months, they wouldn't come back for months at a time.

-Yeah.

So, that's a different relationship.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

To me it speaks volumes of someone coming here and feeling accepted, you know, someone from a completely different culture coming in into your community and feeling like, "You know what?

I'm staying.

I feel at home here."

-Accepted.

-Yeah.

-Marrying in and becoming part of the mob.

-Yeah.

-But we had an Italian guy did the same thing, as well.

He lived with my auntie.

He came from Italy.

-Yeah.

-And he's buried in the community.

He didn't want to go back and get buried in Italy.

He chose to get buried in the community.

And that was, you know, Uncle Marioni.

Tony Marioni and his family.

-Tony Marioni?

-Tony Marioni.

-On the coast of Western Australia, on One Arm.

That's great.

Oh, man!

-So, a lot of families come in, but Malaysian and Asian influence up this way is a big thing.

-She gets to see firsthand the effect this place, this country has on her clients.

-I've had people that have come on my tour, and they've come back three times every year, because they feel that this place is a blessing when they've come out.

They've had their own different experiences and made them feel good.

So, the country -- I talk about country is healing.

Maybe it's done something to visitors that want to keep them coming back all the time.

-Yeah.

-Or maybe it's just me.

Nah.

I'm joking.

-It's both.

It's gotta be both.

I think it's mainly you.

There was, of course, the wide variety of cultures working here in the pearling industry.

And there were also people working at the Sunday Island Mission that was here for decades.

And now she sees their descendants coming here to reconnect.

-But people have, two generations later, have come back to the same space where their ancestors or where their grandfathers have lived and worked with the people because they want to see this country.

-Well, people want to connect with their past.

You get to, many times at a certain point in life, it's like you really want to reconnect.

-I want to go back to Malaysia to see my family's ancestry.

I want to go to Indonesia to see where that history started with the trade between Indonesian and our people, you know?

Long before they had proper boats and you know?

-Oh, yeah.

Like, just the outrigger.

-Outriggers that floated here and they were trading here, and our people would go back with them.

That happened for centuries, you know?

-Can you imagine that first moment an outrigger just sort of shows up?

That one, that sort of singular moment in history?

It's an amazing place.

-Yeah.

-It really is.

Anything can happen here.

[ Laughs ] -I like that, I like that a lot.

-I'm a storyteller.

I like telling stories.

-I like hearing them.

So, we're working out well.

Yeah!

We got back under way and headed on to Sunday Island, the traditional and cultural home of the Jawi people.

♪ ♪ ♪ -All right.

So, here we are in a place called Goodngarngoon.

"Goodngarn" mean water that comes out of the rock.

This place has been very special to my ancestors and my family for thousands of years.

When you arrive in someone else's place, it's like going into their house.

You got to be welcome into their house.

So, same for us.

We welcome our people into the country, and I do a welcoming.

I call out to my ancestors to welcome you in their space.

All right.

[ Speaking a global language ] Thank you.

It has been an ancient practice.

So, when our ancestors used to travel from place to place, they didn't have telephones to tell people that they were coming.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, smoke signals was one way they would let people know they were coming.

-Yeah.

-Or when they see people, they'd sing out straight away.

[ Singing in a global language ] I'm coming into your space.

Allow these people, allow us to come in.

-Yeah.

-Into your space.

Because it's a generation of generations that our ancestors have inherently lived on this country and lived off it, as well, you know, because like we always say, this land don't belong to us.

We belong to the land.

You know, it's the land that's going to look after us and feed us.

So, in turn, we have to look after it and acknowledge the ancestors of that space, as well.

All right.

So, when we come here, I always bring my guests here because this is my ancestors' country.

We say this is our country, but how many years before that have our old people been here looking after country?

So, when I water, we don't use smoking.

We don't do smoking in our culture.

And I don't do smoking because I like to keep my spirits.

Smoking smokes away spirits.

And it can be good or bad, but still, it's a practice of the smoking ceremony.

Other cultures do it because it's important and relevant to them.

-Yeah.

-But for me, for us, we use the water because we are water people.

saltwater people.

So, when you come in here, you stand in the water, you come into my country, I want you to cleanse yourself.

Now, it's about cleansing your feet, your energies.

So, with that then you water, make sure you touch your underarms.

Do that under there so that ancestors can smell you, sense your "goodngarn."

And then your head.

Wash your head because all your feelings, your thoughts, whatever you come here, cleanses you.

It clears you, as well.

So, when you walk away, your energies are cleansed from country.

Country is healing, and it's important that sometimes we can add value to people that come here, as well.

-Yeah.

Well, you walk me through it.

-All right.

When you stand in there, wash your feet.

Hands.

Use the water to wash your hands and then under your underarm.

Put it under your underarm, back in the water.

You're connecting your sense back with the country.

-The other one there.

Ah, got you.

-And your country and the sense are connecting.

And then your head because your thoughts are what thoughts you've come in here before and what you've bought in here will cleanse you and clear your head and leave you with good liyarn, meaning good feeling.

"Gorna liyarn," we say.

-I like that.

Gorna liyarn.

-I like that.

Thank you.

-You're very welcome.

I mentioned we had seven clan groups.

-Yep.

-We represent Jawi here on the islands.

And then the other clan groups are on the mainland.

So, we're the only ones who can talk for this space.

-Who can speak for this, yeah.

-And that's why I want to keep that history going about not only about the mission, but also about my family's ancestors that once lived here prior to the missions.

-Yeah.

-And that's why I continue with this, doing this history, doing my tours.

-And there has been hard-fought progress here for the Bardi Jawi people, particularly in regaining their native title and custodianship of this land and sea in 2005.

-When we had to fight for native title, and we had to prove that we come from here.

My grandparents were a big part of the native-title determinations.

They were the ones who gave a lot of the evidence to the high-court judges.

They had to be grilled, I guess.

You know, asked and talked about their culture, their connections, their ancestry.

They had to prove all that to a Western, you know, Western system.

-Right.

-Whereas we have our cultural system where we know our protocols and our systems, and that's what keep us going today in our traditional practices.

And we got cultural-protection zones all around, kind of hugs the coast of all the islands and all the coasts of the Bardi Jawi country.

But that's where people lived and hunted and practiced all right near the coastal parts of it.

-That's where the resources are, yeah.

-Yeah.

So, we had to change legislation.

So, we're the only marine park in Australia that were able to co-design the marine park with the government, because put our values first and foremost.

But cultural values first and then marine science on top.

And then we're marrying the two now.

And the schools?

The schools do marine-science work now, where culture and science goes hand in hand.

Having that vested interest in making sure that all decisions around saltwater country are managed right way, as well, by the traditional owners.

Our people would wake up and just feel the winds, and they'd know by the stars when to move the boat or when to, you know, go out hunting.

We have integrated within that for generations to be able to benefit, you know, and survive in this place.

And that's what we're still trying to teach people, but not so much teach our kids, but for our visitors, for them to understand that this was the traditional practices and whether it's been lost or not, it's important to talk about it because it's not lost, but it's embedded in everything we do and in all our practices and how we do things, as well.

We always say this land don't belong to us.

We belong to the land.

-This part of the world feels almost like Brigadoon, a place touched by something magical.

At a time when the world feels a bit fractured, Broome offers another course.

Is it a perfect place?

No.

Its history is full of struggle, of discrimination, of cultures colliding.

And there is no question there's more work to be done here.

Yet this place seems to be moving in a new direction, a direction set by the same melting pot of people that have been charting their own course, following their own star over and over again for centuries, communities taking pride in their own history while honoring the history of their neighbors, making that total greater than the sum of its parts.

It's an example set by this little corner of northwestern Australia that the rest of the world would do well to take notice of.

♪ -Log on to culturequest.tv for more information about this and other episodes, and for links to follow us on social media.

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