More Torres Strait Islanders live on the mainland than back in their homeland, but an old wooden boat has reconnected a Cairns-born generation with their ‘Ailan Kastom’ (island custom) and lore.
The boat, called ‘Falla’, is a former pearl lugger, one of hundreds that used to sail the waters of northern Australia from Broome in the west to Mackay in the east, diving for once precious pearl shells.
From the 1860s until the industry collapsed in the 1960s, pearling was the biggest employer of Torres Strait Islanders, before a mass exodus from the waters between the tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea to the mainland to look for work.
Noel Zaro, who runs the Gerib Sik Torres Strait Islander Dance Group in Cairns, says: “Most of the Torres Strait men, after they dived on the boats they left to work cutting cane or in the rail industry, and us guys here, we were born and lived on the mainland".
"We try to keep our culture strong for the new generation coming”. 
When SBS News visits, the dance group is going out to sea for the first time on the boat, which is about 20 metres long. This one was built in Broome, rather than the Torres Strait, in the 1960s and is usually based in Innisfail and used for Great Barrier Reef tours.
The Gerib Sik Torres Strait Islander Dance Group are keeping their culture strong in Cairns. Source: Christine Howes
Playing a traditional warup drum, Noel leads his dance group in song, honouring their seafaring past, a so-called ‘blue water empire’, maintaining their connection to country and their rich maritime history.
Young men including his son dance well-rehearsed moves telling stories of the luggers' days.
Former pearl lugger 'Falla'. Source: Stefan armbruster/SBS News
“Lugger songs are passed down generation to generation. They were composed as they were diving out in the ocean,” Noel says.
Lugger songs are passed down generation to generation. They were composed as they were diving out in the ocean.
“These songs are actual stories, what reef they dived, what wind is blowing, which harbour they come into. So each lugger boat dance, there is a story to it.
“I explain the dances to the young ones, what the language means and when you speak the language, you know where you come from.”
At the helm for the first time in decades is an old hand from the pearling days.
Source: SBS News
“It’s good, it’s good, it takes me back, take me back long time, 60 years,” says Uncle ‘Pedlar’ Morrison.
“I left school at 15 to work on Dad’s pearling boat. It was one big happy family on the boat, men from different islands, it was good but hard. We didn’t have to think about money, but every year when we were discharged we get 75 pounds, that’s it.
“But most of my life I spend in Australia, the railway lines in Western Australia, tuna fishing for 10 years out of Port Lincoln, Sydney and then travelled back to Cairns.”
For 100 years, pearl diving was the mainstay of the Torres Strait Islands' economy but the collapse of the industry in the 1960s marked the start of mass migration by islanders to the mainland to look for work.
Elders 'Pedlar' Morrison and George Mosby out on a lugger for the first time in decades. Source: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News
Of the hundreds of luggers built, only about 14 are still in existence and very few are on the water.
Hanging onto a rope on the bow, looking out to sea after getting a hands-on experience hoisting the sail, dance group leader Noel is emotional.
“The wind blowing and the water against the boat, first time actually using the sail, it’s unreal,” he says.
For his son Caleb, it brings custom into context.
“Good to finally be out on a lugger boat, gives an overall feel of what goes behind the dances,” he says.
“Raising the sail on the mast, it just gave me goosebumps.
Gerib Sik dancers performing to a lugger song. Source: Sonia Minniecon/Pearl Lugger Heritage Fleet
“For me, it’s really important as people, it’s who we are, it’s where we come from, it’s our lifestyle, it’s everything.”
Nowadays, only a fraction of the more than 40,000-strong Torres Strait Islander population lives on the islands on the Papua New Guinea border in the waters north of Cape York.
It was over these islands land rights hero Eddie Koiki Mabo fought and won the landmark High Court legal case overturning ‘terra nullius’, Britain’s justification for colonisation.
Noel’s family is from the same island as Uncle Koiki, known as Murray, or traditionally as Mer.
When Torres Strait basketball hero Patty Mills returned home from the US a few years ago, he travelled with the Gerib Sik group back to Mer.
“A few years ago we went back to Murray Island with Patrick Mills and we were fortunate enough to perform up there with him, to see the island for the first time, to see Eddie Mabo’s grave and his traditional burial site. It was really good,” Caleb says.
After a first taste of life on a pearl lugger, Caleb Zaro wants to go back out to sea. Source: Stefan armbruster/SBS News
“We only went up for a couple of days and wish we’d stay longer. Being mainlanders growing up on the mainland and seeing that island life, it was an eye-opener [compared] to our usual lifestyle.”
Those like Noel are keen to make sure the next generation still understands island traditions and law.
“The main law that was drilled into everyone was tag mauki mauki, which means hands; you don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you, so you keep your hands to yourself," he says.
"Te ter mauki mauki means foot; you don’t walk onto another man’s property, you stay on the path. You must seek permission before you enter another man’s property."
And that property extends beyond what you can see.
“It’s all one, we have our land boundary and the land connects to the sea, and the sea [to] the reef and fish."
It's a message not lost on his son.
“We also being Indigenous Australians, occupying our land up north - our land - always was and always will be," says Caleb.
National NAIDOC Week (8–15 November 2020) celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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