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This paper contributes to an emerging postcolonial literature on the history of surfing by documenting the material cultural practice of surfboard making across Hawai‘i, California and Australia. It outlines what is known of precolonial surfboard-making practices in Hawai‘i and then traces important 20th-century advances in design. In contrast to popular histories of surfing that emphasise Hawaiian ‘tradition’ versus Californian and Australian ‘innovators’, this paper establishes the links, exchanges and information flows that informed evolving practices of surfboard making. Such links, exchanges and information flows were trans-Pacific in nature, even from the early 20th century, and were utterly dependent on both Hawaiian antecedents and contemporary innovations. Although not without contestation, the emergence of surfboard making as a 20th-century trans-Pacific cultural industry was premised on generosity, a sense of artisan brotherhood and an omnipresent thirst in distant corners of the Pacific Ocean for a better way to ride its waves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For Australian and New Zealand children in the early decades of the 20th century, much of their learning about the Pacific Islands came through missionary material, often aimed directly at them. This paper examines the representation of Pacific peoples and societies in a number of monthly journals, sections within adult journals, books and plays designed to enthuse Sunday school children and educate them about missionary activity. Early attempts were ponderous, but Australasian societies soon followed the example of the London Missionary Society's News from Afar (available through Australian Congregational churches), which included adventure stories about children in India, China and the Pacific; news of the various John Williams ships; competitions; specialised artwork; and a generally child-friendly philosophy. Few were as successful, but some imaginative attempts were made by Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican authorities to encourage Australian and New Zealand children to identify with the missionary needs of the Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My title paraphrases that of Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds's recent book, Drawing the Global Colour Line (Melbourne 2008). As those historians explain, the distinction between white and non-white races was drawn with increasing rigour in the three decades or so on either side of 1900. Locally drawn lines, however, could be more substantive, inscribing boundaries across land and sea which confined white and non-white to one side or the other. The white Australia policy provides a perfect example, attempting to cordon off the continent as the exclusive preserve of the white race. However, the actual location of the colour line around white Australia was disputed in the early decades of the 20th century. While the dominant version of the white Australia policy drew the colour line somewhere north of Thursday Island, a significant body of critics insisted that it be drawn somewhere near the Tropic of Capricorn. This paper explores the arguments and assumptions of those critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continent of Australia had a number of appellations until the early 19th century. The most enigmatic of these was Ulimaroa. This name was first used in 1776 by the eccentric Swedish geographer Daniel Djurberg and, subsequently, by a number of other European cartographers. The name originates from Captain James Cook's 1769–70 visit to New Zealand. A number of authors have attempted to account for its meaning, but none has been successful. This paper reviews their efforts, before considering linguistic and historical evidence to propose that Ulimaroa actually referred to an island known to the New Zealand Māori. It also briefly explores the implications for the extent of voyaging by the New Zealand Māori and their knowledge of the pig. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A Pacific Islander known only as Tommy Tanna, who was employed as a servant in Sydney in the late 19th century, is widely credited with introducing body surfing to Australia. Along with the better-known Alick Wickham and Duke Kahanamoku, Tanna represents the contributions of Pacific Islanders to the development of Australian aquatic sport and is racialised and mythologised in memory. This paper examines Tanna via the lenses of race and performance. It aims to situate Tanna within the context of other Pacific Islanders in the aquatic ‘show spaces’ of Sydney and the reinvigoration, development and reification of a Nimble Savage stereotype which ascribed aquatic prowess to some Islanders, and to assess his surfing activities as performative of race. This discursive context assists in analysing the ways that Tanna has been represented in varying acts of social memory, which themselves are performative acts that link his contributions with his Pacific origins. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is relatively scant evidence of the Indigenous production and consumption of intoxicating drinks on the Australian mainland prior to the arrival of outsiders. Although Australian Aboriginal peoples had mastered fermentation in some regions, the Indigenous manufacture of much stronger drinks by distillation was unknown on the Australian mainland. However, following contact with Pacific Island and Southeast Asian peoples in the 19th century, Islanders in the Torres Strait adopted techniques for fermenting and distilling what became a quasi-indigenous alcoholic drink known as tuba. This paper discusses the historical process of the diffusion of this substance as a result of labour migration and internationalisation in the Strait, and provides present-day accounts of tuba production from Torres Strait Islanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]