‘Manilamen’ in Australia

Canberra is not on the Pinoy tourist’s go-to list for Australia, which is topped by Sydney and Melbourne. Two days into a short visit, on the invitation of the Australian National University Philippines Institute, I can say that Canberra isn’t as bad as I was warned about. On arrival from Manila, with a short connection in Melbourne, my hotel room wasn’t ready, so I walked to the National Museum of Australia to get an introduction to the land and people. My first stops in any new place are museums and markets; in these places, I draw a sense of place or context. The museum made a clear reference to the original or first Australians, the indigenous people long hidden from histories written by the white settlers. Walking through galleries on geology, flora, fauna, animals, etc., gave me a crash course on the lay of the land. On the day of the grand rally against corruption in Manila, I was face-to-face with a giant stuffed crocodile in Canberra, a reminder of the “buwayas” in government, who deserve both fire in hell and justice on Earth.

Among the exhibits on the peopling of Australia, I focused on a section about Chinese aboriginals, or mestizos, born from the arrival of Chinese workers during the 19th-century Australian gold rush. I went through this exhibit twice, vainly hoping to find a Philippine connection. Settlers from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Malaya were referenced, but the Pinoys, as usual, were invisible in the narrative. Back in the hotel, a little online research led me to an interesting article by Anna Shnukal about Filipino/Malay communities in the Torres Strait. Pinoys first came to Australia in the 1870s as divers, harvesting pearl and bêche-de-mer, or sea cucumber. They established communities on Thursday Island, where they were known as “Manilamen,” to distinguish them from other ethnic Malays from the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere. Manilamen were not necessarily from Manila, but from the Philippine Islands.

The most famous Pinoy at the turn of the 20th century was Heriberto Zarcal, whose naturalization process in May 1897 was simpler than that of others of Malay stock because he came from the Philippines. As “a native born of a European state,” Zarcal was a Spanish subject entitled to Australian naturalization. While Manilamen were generally classified as Malay, the other thing that made them different was religion: Malays were usually Muslim, while Manilamen were Roman Catholic. So while Manilamen usually married indigenous women, some came with wives from Portuguese Macao and Goa.

Shnukal provided a table of naturalized Malays/Filipinos from 1886 to 1900 that should provide leads for further research and could justify Pinoy inclusion in the ethnographic exhibit at the National Museum of Australia. Naturalized Pinoys were: Pedro Galora, aka “Peter Manila,” a diver born in Cebu; Anthony Spain, aka “Antonio Puerte” a tailor born in Cebu; Raphael Louse Castro, aka “Louis Manila,” a diver born in Vigan; Henrique Elarde, Ambrosio Lucio Artigoza, Tolentino Conanan, and Matthew Roderick, aka Matteo Rodriguez, and Pablo Remedio, respectively, pearl shellers from the Philippines; Heriberto Zarcal, a pearl sheller and a jeweler; Pedro Guivara, a pearl sheller and diver; Marcelino Rapo and Nicolas de la Cruz, divers; Marcos Peres, diver and boat owner; and Benito Lanzarote, billiard room proprietor.

Shnukal noted that Pinoy immigrants were more diverse than Malays in terms of occupations. In other words, then, as now, Manilamen were were “maabilidad” or “may diskarte,” working as: “bêche-de-mer fisher, billiard marker, billiard room proprietor, boarding house keeper, carpenter, commission agent, cook, deck hand, crew driver, foreman, goldsmith, hairdresser, jeweler, laborer, laundryman, lugger owner, pump hand, sail maker, servant, pearl sheller, shell sorter, shell packer, skipper, storekeeper, storeman, tender, waterman, and woodcutter.” I wouldn’t be surprised if some industrious Manilamen worked or owned places for gambling, opium, and prostitution that provided recreation or “panandaliang aliw” in what was then known on Thursday Island as Malaytown. There was money to be had from working in pearls, sea cucumber, and gold.

Manilamen who settled on Horn Island traveled to Thursday Island to go to church on Sundays, deliver produce, and buy provisions. According to Shnukal, “most of their food, except for flour, rice, salt, onions, and potatoes, consisted of vegetables grown in the household gardens … shellfish and crabs gathered near the shoreline … fish every day … and fruit from the coconut, banana, mango, and pawpaw trees planted near their houses for food and privacy. They made Filipino wine, tuba from coconut blossoms, and sometimes the village men returned … in the moonlight, happily intoxicated.” Their houses were built Filipino-style, and behind the neighborhood was a bamboo grove that provided wood for house materials and even fishing spears.

Overseas Filipinos are everywhere; their history in Australia, going back to the late 19th century, is worth a doctoral dissertation.