Broome, Australia Pearling History

The first divers were Aborigines, many of whom were kidnapped, then brutally exploited and abused – forced to dive to dangerous depths. By the late 19th century, pearling masters, often the younger sons of English gentry, were recruiting men from China, Japan, the Malay peninsula and the Dutch East Indies for the difficult, perilous task of diving for mother-of-pearl – for it was the shell, used to make buttons, that was valued then; a pearl found inside was just a bonus.

The Japanese came to dominate the industry, which peaked in the early 1900s, when Broome supplied 80 per cent of the world's pearl shell. Man-made buttons eventually killed off the shell trade, but cultured pearls restored local fortunes, and today Broome pearls remain the world's most highly prized.

The town's rich multicultural past, meanwhile, is visible in the features of its inhabitants, who can point to a hotch-potch of ancestry – Japanese, Malay and Aboriginal, for instance. The annual Shinju Matsuri Festival of the Pearl celebrates Broome's particularly close links with Japan.

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