Older Bajo men claim that their fathers or grandfathers were the first to sail to Ashmore Reef from Mantigola. At some point in the Dutch colonial period, they say that a crew of Mantigola Bajo on a perahu anchored at Kupang met a schooner captain known as Tuan Robin. This man asked the Bajo crew to work for him to collect turtle shell in Australia. The Bajo agreed and accompanied Tuan Robin on his schooner. They spent a number of weeks catching hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and removing their shells at an island off the coast of northwest Australia. On their return to Kupang the Bajo were paid for their efforts and went back to their home village. These Mantigola Bajo were only employed by Tuan Robin on this one occasion.
Si Mbaga, an elder of Mola Selatan accompanied his father and grandfather and other men from Mantigola on this journey to Kupang. At that time he was an adolescent and acted as the tukang masak (cook). It is difficult to estimate the age of Si Mbaga, but he was probably over eighty years old in 1995. When the Bajo crew went with Tuan Robin, Si Mbaga stayed behind in Kupang and looked after their boat, so his knowledge of some of the events is based on information passed to him by his father and grandfather.
In the old days only Raas people and Madura people went to Ashmore Reef [Pulau Pasir] and Scott Reef [Pulau Datu]. In the old days Raas people lived at Semau Island [Pulau Samahung]. Ashmore Reef was the place to cook trepang. We heard stories about Ashmore Reef from Raas people. We first wanted to go net fishing [ngambai] at Rote. The Raas people told my grandfather about Ashmore Reef. We obtained a sailing clearance in Kupang and followed them to Ashmore Reef. At that time, there weren’t any problems [any regulations about fishing at Ashmore Reef]. We only had to obtain a clearance in Kupang if we wanted to go fishing and cook trepang at the island. This was the first time we went to Ashmore Reef. The second time [was when] we met Tuan Robin in Kupang.
We were anchored at Tanoo [Tenau Harbour, Kupang] and wanted to go fishing for trepang at Ashmore Reef when a schooner sailing ship came and anchored near to us. The captain of the schooner was Tuan Robin and he had five Alor people with him. We met Tuan Robin and he asked us to work for him. We said to him that we wanted to fish for trepang, fish and trochus at Ashmore Reef but he said, ‘if you want to, come and work for me in Marege [Australia] and collect turtle shell’. My father and grandfather, along with six other crew, were taken on the schooner to Kea Island [Pulau Kea], an island off the coast of Marege, while I stayed in Tablolong to look after the boat. I was already a youth, already circumcised, at that time.…
They were taken to Marege for 17 days to collect turtles [kulitang]. They collected 40 bags of turtle shell. My father said that they didn’t kill the turtles. Tuan Robin instructed them to heat up water in a drum. After that, the turtles were pulled up onto the boat and the hot water was poured over the turtles and the shells peeled off. Then the turtles were thrown back in the water. Aboriginal people [orang Marege] took a few of the turtles to eat.
After 17 days the schooner returned to Tanoo and they got off the boat and called a friend of mine from Tablolong who was at Tanoo at the time to take our perahu to Tanoo. The day after they returned, Tuan Robin paid each crew member two gold coins.
Complementary to Si Mbaga’s recollections are comments by Si Bilaning, a contemporary of Si Mbaga, who also lived in Mantigola and was probably over eighty years old.
My father was one of the first Bajo to go to the pulau [Australian islands]. They were taken to Marege by Tuan Robin and he had a schooner with three layers of jib sail. There they collected turtles. From those times until now lots of Sama people sail to Ashmore Reef, Scott Reef, and Seringapatam Reef [Sapa Taringan]. In the old days it was open [to fish there], then later it was forbidden.
Kupang-based Australian and British captains soon diversified into fishing for marine products such as trochus, trepang and turtle shell traditionally taken by Indonesians. During trips between Kupang and Cossack, these captains had observed perahu from Timor and Madura returning with marine produce collected from Rowley Shoals and the Ashmore and Holothuria reefs (Bain 1982: 184–8). This lucrative trade passed through Dutch ports and a living could be earned that was less dangerous than pearling.
While Henry Hilliard continued to supply men from Kupang to the northwest pearling industry, he employed Europeans and other Indonesians to work on a fleet of Dutch-registered schooners and cutters and locally built perahu. Hilliard‘s fleet followed much the same sailing and fishing patterns as the Indonesian perahu, fishing offshore reefs and various islands and reefs close to the Australian mainland where supplies could be obtained (Crawford 1969: 119–20). Vessels would stop first at Roti to obtain firewood and water and then sail south to fish the Ashmore, Scott and Seringapatam reefs, and sometimes as far south as Rowley Shoals and on to Minstrel, Clerk and Imperieuse reefs. When supplies ran low the vessels could sail to the Australian coast to re-stock and then work the reefs near the shores such as Long Reef and the Holothuria Reefs. In May, the vessels would congregate at Jones Island to catch hawksbill turtles and take their shells (ibid.). There are a number of references to Hilliard’s fishing activities, over a period from 1894 through to the early 1920s, in places that included King Sound, Adele Island, Scott Reef, Ashmore Reef and Rowley Shoals (Bach 1955: 209; Bottrill 1993: 23, 28).
Around the same time as Europeans established themselves in Kupang, a number of men set up beach-combing camps along the northwest coast of Australia where they collected turtle shell, trepang, trochus and pearl shell using Aboriginal labour. These beach-combers had strong connections with the Kupang-based captains (including Hilliard) who called regularly at their camps to trade. Their camps were located near to Adele and Browse islands, the Lacepede Islands and Lynheer Reef off the Kimberley coast (Bain 1982: 188–91).
Mr H.V. Howe, a Broome-based pearling captain before World War I, published an article in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1952 about the Kupang-based vessels then operating in the Timor Sea. [3]
In 1910, there were 25 vessels, of which six were European-style schooners of 50 to 60 tonnes, skippered by those aged master mariners, whose eventful maritime careers were — and still are — discussed with interest in all Asiatic ports from Karachi to Shanghai. The rest of the Koepang fleet consisted of native prahus of from 10 to 20 tons, skippered by Malay ‘Kungawas’, [4] who, with lifelong knowledge of the coast and its winds and tides, and with the aid of more or less accurate compasses, navigated to and from various destinations with relatively few mishaps. These smaller vessels fished the coast and adjacent islands, because proximity of the mainland enabled easy replenishment of wood and water supplies. The larger schooners normally worked the six coral atolls which lie in a 500 miles-long chain about 100 miles off the Western Australian coast. From the north-east to south-west these are Ashmore, Seringapatam, Scotts, Minstrel, Mermaid, and Imperieuse Reefs.… On each of these islets the fishing schooners set up their boilers and smokehouses for treating the trepang and trochus shell.
The usual ‘take’ of a schooner on a five months’ trip to the reef is worth between £2,000 and £3,000.… About once a fortnight the daily routine is interrupted by a day’s fishing for hawksbill turtle, which yields the tortoise shell of commerce. Nets are stretched across the seaward ends of a number of the channels crossing a reef. At low tide all hands start wading from the lagoon, beating the surface of the channel before them, and driving the turtle into the nets. The catches are taken back to the island, where bags, dipped in boiling water, are laid across their backs for a minute or two. This treatment enables the flakes of tortoiseshell to be lifted from the hard bone to which it is attached. After collection of the tortoise shell the turtle is set free to grow another crop — which it does in about two years. Cruel as the process may seem, it does not appear to hurt the turtle, which show no sign of discomfort under the bag, and when released make their way back to deep water (apparently) unperturbed by the ordeal.…
Notwithstanding the hardships of the life, trips to the reefs are popular with the Timorese, who are always eager to sign on as schooner crews. With his pay of £1 a month and the smoked fish he brings back, each man earns about £20 on a trip. This is good money for in Koepang a fair average quality wife costs only 30/-, and the local equivalent of a film star can be bought for £5, which is also the cost of building a good native house… . [O]ne trip to the reefs secures the fisherman a home, economic security for life, as much domestic felicity as the average man can expect, and still leaves him £5 to spend on furniture and wedding festivities! (Howe 1952: 7)
Some time between 1900 and 1910, Hilliard was joined by his eldest son, Robin Henry Hilliard, who was born in 1888. The exact date of Robin’s arrival in Kupang and entry into the business is not known, but in 1914 it was reported by Mr Stuart, the Pearling Inspector at Broome, that Alex Chamberlain, formerly a Broome-based pearler for 10 years, had gone into partnership with Robin Hilliard in a Kupang-based trading company. Together they owned a British-registered schooner, the John & Richard (Bottrill 1993: 33). [5] On 10 February 1915 Stuart wrote to the Secretary of Western Australian Fisheries about the activities of the Kupang fleet:
I found out that WA Chamberlain and R Hilliard had had an exceptionally fine year and had fished among other things £1,500 worth of turtle shell, Chamberlain apparently works over a large area and will work Rowley Shoals for beche-de-mer and probably the territorial waters of the north-west north of Admiralty Gulf where I believe turtles are plentiful (Bottrill 1993: 37, citing letter in Fisheries Department File 57/38, Battye Library, Western Australia).
In the same letter Stuart listed nine vessels reported to be based in Kupang and working the northwest coastal areas and offshore islands and reefs in the Timor Sea. Aside from the John & Richard, these included two schooners, Petunia and Harriet, owned by a Dutch merchant called Tiffer, the Joker owned by Ah Kit, and five schooners owned by a merchant named Toku Baru (known also as Captain China) that were managed by Henry Hilliard. [6]
In 1923, another incident concerning the activities of Robin Hilliard was reported to Stuart. In March of that year, F.H. Clark, a pearler in the lugger Emelyn Castle, came across Robin Hilliard in charge of the schooner Petina at an inlet south of Red Island off Cape Bougainville. He was processing trepang on the coast. On boarding the vessel and examining the log, Clark found that the vessel was owned by Firma Thoeng Thay Company of Kupang and had a crew of 13 Kupangers. Hilliard had been cleared by authorities in Kupang for Scott Reef and had collected trepang there (Crawford 1969: 121; Bottrill 1993: 45). [7]
The activities of the Hilliard family in the northwest region continued for around three decades. If Si Mbaga was born around 1910, the Mantigola Bajo encounter with Tuan Robin would have occurred at the very end of that period. Robin Hilliard apparently stopped working the northwest coast around the time that his father died in 1924 (Bottrill 1993: 45). [8] This may have been due to increasing Australian government control over illegal fishing activities and the Dutch refusal to issue more clearances for Scott Reef, but the beach-combers Hilliard had worked with were also growing old or had moved away and local resources were in decline (Bain 1982: 198).
After Robin Hilliard stopped fishing the northwest region he formed the Flores Pearling Company, a partnership with merchants from Broome and Makassar.
[Hilliard] proposed to H.S. Cross, an indent agent and pearl-buyer in Broome, that they move to the island of Flores, where there was gold-lipped shell in great quantities. At Makassar, an approach was made to Gros Kamp and Drofmeyer, Dutch merchants. The Flores Pearling Company was formed and by 1929 fourteen luggers were working fifty miles off the coast and collecting large hauls of shell which was [were] sold through Osche & Co., of New York (Bain 1982: 198–9).
An advertisement appeared in the local Broome newspaper, The Norwest Echo, on 24 October 1926, announcing that Robin Hilliard was now pearling in the Dutch Indies, but still recruiting men for the northwest pearling industry during December-January each year (Bottrill 1993: 47). He continued to operate out of Labuan Bajo in Flores until World War II, when he and his partner, Alex Chamberlain, were interned by the Japanese. He was sent to Makassar in 1944 where he died in captivity and was buried (personal communication, George Hilliard, 1998). [9]
[3] While some of Howe’s comments are ethnocentric and characteristic of the time, his description of the method of turtle fishing complements that of the Bajo themselves.
[4] This is apparently a corruption of the Bahasa term punggawa (captain or navigator), which is widely used by the Bajo and other maritime populations in Indonesia.
[5] Bottrill visited the village of Pepela on Roti in 1988 to collect oral histories of fishing in the northwest region, and states (ibid.: 54) that Robin Hilliard was known to the Rotinese as Tuan Robin. We also know that he married a Rotinese woman from Oenale (personal communication, George Hilliard, 1998).
[6] Toku Baru is still an established shop name in Kupang, and local people commonly refer to Chinese traders by the name of their shop.
[7] Crawford (1969: 122–3; 2001) reproduces photographs of Hilliard’s boat and trepang camp that were taken by Clark on 29 March.
[8] By one account Henry Hilliard is said to have died of ptomaine poisoning in Makassar in 1920 (Bain 1982: 198), but Robin’s son George has confirmed Henry died of food poisoning in Kupang in 1924 and is buried in the Dutch cemetery there.
[9] An interview with Pak Nasseng from Sulamu village, near Kupang, in 1994 indicates that Robin Hilliard’s involvement with Bajo people from different parts of the Nusa Tenggara region continued through the final stage of his career.