The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change (15 page)

Jukes grasped Burke’s idea that the psychological thrill felt on such occasions depended on seeing a terrifying scene from a position of at least provisional safety—though the geologist couldn’t help wondering at the same time whether the
Fly
might not similarly “leave her ribs and trucks on some such wild reef.” In a sense he was feeling both real terror and its pleasurable aesthetic simulacrum. Still, we can imagine that Jukes’s hero James Cook would have been baffled at how the visceral fear felt by his crew at the sight of these “sullen reefs” could, some seventy years later, have become a form of excitement at nature’s “grandeur and display of power and beauty.” As a coral scientist, Jukes felt a further thrill, too, from his sense that “the reef … on which we stood, was one of nature’s mysteries, its origins equally wonderful and obscure, its extent so vast, and its accompaniments so simple, so grand, and appropriate.”
28

*   *   *

At the same time Jukes did not shut his imperial eye, making sure to report as requested on several places that seemed suitable for future settlement. Here again, his meshing of rational expertise and romantic enthusiasm made him a forceful advocate of the Reef’s potential. He thought that the coastland, islands, and waters around the Broad Sound and the Whitsunday Passage had “natural advantages” superior to any other region he’d seen on the Reef, with fertile soils, lush grasses, abundant fresh water, plentiful bays and inlets, and exceptional tidal movements. The latter, he pointed out, meant that small vessels could lie securely in the mud and then be refloated at high tide. Good timber was available for building dockyards, a perpetual sea breeze ensured comfort and good health, and there were “numerous small islands, lofty, rocky, and picturesque in character, and covered with grass and pines, with many small coves and anchorages.” These last were also well protected from ocean swells and storms by the Barrier’s coral ramparts. That the Whitsunday region is today a mecca for cruising boats and tourists testifies to the geologist’s prescience.
29

He was impressed most, however, when the
Fly
reached the main headquarters of their survey, a subregion at the tip of Cape York where the coast of Australia intersects with the islands, reefs, and waters of the Torres Strait. Evans Bay possesses similar climatic and environmental attractions as the Whitsundays: fertile elevated coastland, abundant timber and water, regular rainfall, cooling breezes, and anchorages “defended … by coral reefs.” These advantages alone, Jukes argued, would make it a much preferable imperial post to the only settlement existing in the far north at that time, Port Essington. The latter was located in the Gulf of Carpentaria and was fetid, ant-infested, fever-ridden, and too remote for passing ships.

The tip of Cape York, in contrast, offered a perfect refuge for ships passing through Endeavour Strait, as well as a strategic and navigational vantage point from which Britain could oversee “the entire trade of the South Pacific, with the whole of the Indian Ocean.” Thanks to the survey by the
Bramble
in February–April 1845, a safe direct passage through Endeavour Strait would take vessels within a mile of Cape York, where a new post could provide easy communications and a coaling station for steamships. Like the Straits of Malacca, Jukes predicted, this could eventually become “one of the great highways of the world.”
30

The scientist in him was also elated to discover that this region constituted a major faunal boundary line: “it was evident that in crossing Torres Strait we were passing from the Australian centre of life … into that of the Indian Archipelago.” The differences between the two regions could be observed in the marine species, which met from opposite oceanic directions. Torres Strait shells, echinoderms, and reef burrowers, for example, were “generally more brilliant in form and colour, than those on the Australian coast.” The much damper climate of New Guinea also prevailed in the Torres Strait, contributing to the creation of rich black soil, “dank woods and jungles,” and a variety of cultivable edible species, including coconut palms, plantains, yams, taro, and sweet potatoes.
31

The mixture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clans at Evans Bay also suggested that the region served as a boundary line for two different racial groups. The Torres Strait Islanders were markedly stockier and lighter-skinned than mainland Aborigines. They belonged, Jukes thought, “to the great Papuan race, which extends from Timor and the adjacent islands through New Guinea, New Ireland, and New Caledonia, to the Feejee Islands.”
32

The
Fly
’s first meetings with Islander peoples—from the islands of Mer, Erroob, Oomaga, Dammood, and Masseed—had been conducted under a cloud of suspicion. These were, after all, the cannibalistic “tribes” denounced in the Admiralty tracts about the
Charles Eaton
massacre. Jukes, like most of the officers, had read Captain Lewis’s account of rescuing the two boys, Ireland and D’Oyley. It was a story that affected him personally, because a Wolverhampton family friend on board the ship had supposedly been “eaten by the natives.” Griffin, as usual, could be counted on to exercise supererogatory vigilance. He nicknamed the two leading Erroob traders “Mr. Murderem” and “Clubbrains,” and speculated darkly that it was only the
Fly
’s guns that “held in check … more than one savage, who, moody and morose, brooded gloomily, with lowering look and murderous scowl, on what he would do with that cruel stone club if he dared.”
33

By contrast, it took Jukes only hours to warm to the young men, women, and children who everywhere walked up “unarmed, [and] with the utmost confidence,” holding coconuts and turtle shell, waving conciliatory green branches and shouting “poud, poud, poud … meaning Peace! peace” as they advanced. Every shore visit added to his confidence. Crowds mobbed him excitedly, yelling out his nickname “Dookie,” and on Erroob Island he formally exchanged names with “a fine straight-limbed and graceful young fellow, called Doodegab,” whose chaste, petticoat-wearing sisters were persuaded to stroll with the geologist arm in arm. Jukes was impressed, too, by senior Islander men like Old Seewai, Mammoos, and Old Duppa, whose tribal influence seemed to derive from a combination of wealth, generosity, courage, and wisdom. Old Duppa, who’d rescued the two shipwrecked
Charles Eaton
boys in exchange for a bunch of bananas, even managed to win over Griffin with his “benevolence” and his “affectionate” inquiries about the well-being of their two adoptive sons, Wak and Uass.
34

Everything Jukes observed seemed to contradict the Islanders’ reputation for savagery: the elegant villages studded with fine houses, groves, and temples; the cultivated gardens of yams and plantains; the magnificent twin-hulled sailing canoes; the elaborate collections of crafts, fabrics, carvings, weapons, and trade goods; and the mellifluous languages the Islanders were keen to teach the visitors.
35

Jukes the naturalist was fascinated by the Islanders’ sophisticated taxonomies of local biota. When he asked Mammoos the Erroob terms for a variety of shells, the old man cited “almost as many names as there were genera, and for some species of one genus he had different names.” The taxonomic principles used for each category of shell were, Jukes discerned, based on “general form,” such as those having wrinkled mouths or longish shells. As a result, the naturalist concluded, “there were many more distinct names for the different shells than we have in common English.”
36

Only once did the
Fly
sailors experience an episode of hostility in the Torres Strait. Returning, during the same voyage, to Erroob in May 1845, they were startled to be greeted with a volley of arrows fired by individuals who’d earlier treated them as honored guests. Sensible Jukes soon discovered that the two most influential men on the island, Mammoos and Seewai, had quarreled during their absence and placed various island sites under taboo, or “galla.” One of these sites happened to be Beeka, the
Fly
crew’s usual beaching site. As a result, Jukes explained, “our landing there was an offence against their customs, for which the arrows were shot yesterday.” After mutual explanations and apologies, both warring groups pledged to restore their former good relations with the visitors. An island-wide peace followed, which included a reconciliation between Seewai and Mammoos.
37

Shortly after this, even the suspicious Griffin succumbed to the beauties of the island and its people. An afternoon walk to Seewai’s village became for him “a romantic adventure” in “a fairy glen,” as “the sky, of intense blue, inclosed a leafy tracery of tropical richness, hung with luminous loveliness over an enchanting scene.” Inspired by this loveliness, one of the
Fly
sailors began to sing a traditional folk tune—“Through the wood, through the wood, follow and find me”—to which Old Seewai “listened with rapt attention and delight.” Eventually, Griffin recalled, “the good old native” led the way back to the beach.
38

A month later, in a letter written from Erroob to his sister, Jukes summed up the prevailing attitude of the crew toward the Islanders: “Altogether we have been greatly interested and amused with these people, and like them much; and were it not that they have an unfortunate predilection for collecting skulls, no fault could be found with them.” He even offered a rational explanation for that gruesome habit, which “proceeds,” he explained to his sister, “from an idea that of all the skulls they can collect during life-time the owners shall be their servants and followers in the next world. Of course to have a white man as a slave would be a great honour.”
39

*   *   *

In the same letter, Jukes admitted that the likelihood of receiving orders to return home any moment was weighing on his spirits. Their long sojourn in the Great Barrier Reef had eroded all his sense of belonging to England, which now seemed like “a foreign country.” “Were it not for my mother and yourself and my other relations,” he confessed, “I should feel little wish to see it again, so strange and remote does it now seem to me.”
40

By the time he prepared to depart from Sydney in early October 1845, his feeling of impending loss had deepened into full melancholy. The idea of resuming a “quiet domestic existence” loomed like a sentence of slow death. Better a native spear in the back any day. “Heaven send I may never have to die in my bed by decay or disease, but may meet the ‘grim feature’ face to face in the free air, and with my blood warm.” Griffin, who’d spent their refitting time in Sydney undertaking a series of rollicking up-country adventures with wild colonials, echoed these sentiments exactly.
41

Three years later, Jukes was given the opportunity to return to Australia as a geological surveyor, but his new wife was reluctant, fearing the reputation of the remote continent. Instead he took a job working on a geological survey in Ireland, where it was said that the harsh weather, lonely conditions, and the effects of being thrown from his horse caused a gradual breakdown of his body and mind. He died in 1869, only two years after his old friend Griffin published a sparkling tribute to their adventures together as daring explorers of the beautiful Barrier Reef.

Joseph Beete Jukes, “the geologist,” was a pioneer of three major traditions of Barrier Reef thought. He was the first scientific analyst of the Reef’s geological origins and coral structures, the first professional-style ethnographer of Indigenous Reef cultures, and the first European writer to appreciate the Reef’s distinctive romantic beauties.

As an ethnographer, Jukes anticipated the fair-minded Oswald Brierly, whom we will encounter in the next chapter. As an observer and writer, he greatly extended the aesthetic observations of his predecessors Cook and Flinders, and it is surely Jukes’s classic version of the sublime as a kind of thrilling awe that today’s Reef divers, filmmakers, and sailors still try to convey, even if they’re not always aware of its philosophical origins. But it was primarily as a scientist that Jukes influenced his successors. And although Charles Darwin never saw the Great Barrier Reef himself, it is no exaggeration to say that modest Joseph Beete Jukes did the geological work there that Darwin would have liked to, and which even he could not have bettered.

PART TWO

Nurture

5

HEARTH

Barbara Thompson, the Ghost Maiden

S
OME FOUR YEARS AFTER JOSEPH JUKES LEFT
Australia, a young woman living on the southwestern Torres Strait island of Muralag (Prince of Wales Island) heard news that made her heart sing. Giom, as she was known, learned on October 13, 1849 that a large ship had anchored off the nearby mainland beach of Podaga (Evans Bay). No ordinary vessel, it was that rare phenomenon a
marki angool
, or ghost ship, filled with the wraith-like white creatures that Aborigines and Islanders turned into when they came back to earth after death.

Giom was herself a
marki naroka
, a ghost maiden. Five years earlier she had been rescued from a shipwreck by three young men, whereupon an elder of the Kaurareg people and his wife recognized by her chin and eyes that she was their daughter Giom, who’d died by drowning and had now returned to them from the sea. The elder, Peaqui, and his wife, Gameena, adopted the young white woman.
1

On this October day of 1849 one of her rescuers—kindly, ugly Thomagugu, a Gudang Aboriginal man from the mainland—came to the island to spread the news of this remarkable ship. The Gudang and Kaurareg intermixed somewhat, and Thomagugu had relatives as well as friends on Muralag. As his adoptive sister, Giom was one of the first to be told the news, and she also overheard him urging the Kaurareg to send an expedition to the ship for gifts of knives, axes, cloth, and bottles.