Makassar
trepangers from the southwest corner of
Sulawesi visited the coast of northern Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to collect and process
trepang (also known as
sea cucumber), a marine invertebrate prized for its culinary and medicinal values in
Chinese markets. The term Makassan (or Macassan) is generally used to apply to all the trepangers who came to Australia, although some were from other islands in the
Indonesian Archipelago, including
Timor,
Rote and
Aru. Fishing fleets began to visit the northern coasts of Australia from
Makassar in southern
Sulawesi,
Indonesia from about 1720, but possibly earlier. While Campbell Macknight's classic study of the Makassan trepang industry accepts the start of the industry as about 1720, with the earliest recorded trepang voyage made in 1751, Regina Ganter of Griffith University notes a Sulawesi historian who suggests a commencement date for the industry of about 1640. Ganter also notes that for some anthropologists, the extensive impact of the trepang industry on the
Yolngu people suggests a longer period of contact.
Arnhem Land rock art, recorded by archaeologists in 2008, appears to provide further evidence of Makassan contact in the mid-1600s. Contact has even been proposed from as early as the 1500s. At the height of the trepang industry, Makassans ranged thousands of kilometres along Australia's northern coasts, arriving with the north-west monsoon each December. Makassan
perahu or praus could carry a crew of thirty members, and Macknight estimated the total number of trepangers arriving each year as about one thousand. The Makassan crews established themselves at various semi-permanent locations on the coast, to boil and dry the trepang before the return voyage home, four months later, to sell their cargo to Chinese merchants.
Marege' was the Makassan name for Arnhem land, (meaning literally "Wild Country") from the
Cobourg Peninsula to
Groote Eylandt in the
Gulf of Carpentaria.
Kayu Jawa was the name for the fishing grounds in the
Kimberley region of Western Australia, from Napier Broome Bay to
Cape Leveque. Other important fishing areas included
West Papua,
Sumbawa,
Timor,
Flores, and
Selayar.
Matthew Flinders in his circumnavigation of Australia in 1803, met a Makassan trepang fleet near present day
Nhulunbuy. He communicated at length with a Makassan captain, Pobasso, through his cook, who was also a Malay, and learned of the extent of the trade from this encounter. Ganter writes that there were at most "1,000 Macassans" compared to the almost "7,000 British nestled into Sydney Cove and Newcastle."
Nicholas Baudin also encountered 26 large
perahu off the northern coast of Western Australia in the same year. Ganter states that the British settlements of
Fort Dundas and
Fort Wellington were established as a result of
Phillip Parker King's contact with Makassan trepangers in 1821. The trade continued to dwindle toward the end of the 19th century, due to the imposition of customs duties and licence fees and probably compounded by over fishing. Using Daeng Rangka commanded the last Makassar
perahu, which left
Arnhem Land in 1907. ==Lifestyle==