WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

Ethnographic evidence shows that both men and women participated in the exchange
of shell within the Kimberley and adjacent areas (Akerman with Stanton 1994;
Kaberry 1939, 168-9 and 171). A senior Worrorra woman (now deceased) referred to
pearl shells as the 'black man's passport' because in the old days people who wanted to
visit another group would send a shell ahead with a messenger in order to announce
their intention to visit. If the shell was sent back, they knew they were unwelcome at
the time (Blundell and Woolagoodja 2005, 246).
Plain and engraved Kimberley pearl shell, and fragments of pearl shell, have been
traded via networks as far south as the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula and as far east
as Boulia in Queensland (Roth 1897; Bolam 1923; McCarthy 1939). It was also
recorded by ethnographers in the possession of Arrernte and other central Australian
Indigenous peoples (Spencer and Gillen 1899). Its use has been mapped across twothirds
of the Australian mainland (McCarthy 1939; Akerman and Stanton 1994;
Kerwin 2006). McBryde (1987, 603) refers to the trade as '…spectacular, spanning
the continent' and Bornman (2009) confirms the trade of pearl shell continues today.
During the 1980s, as the production of carved shell declined at coastal centres,
Indigenous artisans at centres far removed from the coast began to shape and decorate
natural valves of pearl shell, which had largely replaced the previously worked shell
as an important item of gift exchange. Pearl shell is known to have been carved at
centres including Fitzroy Crossing, Christmas Creek, Balgo, Jigalong, Wiluna and the
Warburton Ranges in Western Australia, and at Timber Creek, Lajumanu and
Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. On the coast a resurgence of production of
engraved shell, both for internal cultural consumption and to supply the growing art
market, was undertaken by a small group of craftsmen under the supervision of a
senior Traditional Owner at Lombadina in the early 1990s. Shells carved during this
period were seen at Yagga Yagga, south of Balgo/Wirrimanu, early in that decade
(Akerman et. al. 2010).
It is important to note that the cultural values associated with Kimberley pearl shell
objects make them of great cultural relevance across the whole area of their
distribution, and these values or qualities are maintained even when the shell enters
areas such as the Gulf of Carpentaria region or East Arnhem Land, where pearl shell
is available locally – it is the exotic Kimberley shell, sourced through traditional
exchange mechanisms, that is sought after and prized, (Trigger 1987, 76; Berndt et al.
1982, 112; Akerman with Stanton 1994, 17 and 22). This sustained interest and
engagement in the trade of pearl shell from the Kimberley coast confirms McCarthy's
(1939, 92) opinion, that the distribution of pearl shell is the 'most tangible example of
distant trading relationships in Aboriginal Australia'.
Traded items with less extensive distributions than Kimberley pearl shell include:
undecorated pearl shell and melo shell from Cape York (Akerman and Stanton 1994);
baler shells from Cape York (McCarthy 1939; Akerman and Stanton 1994; Kerwin
2006, 99); stone axes from Mt Isa (Tibbett 2002, 24) and Mt William (DEWHA
2007) and the central Australian trade in pitjuri (Watson 1983, Kerwin 2006) and
Pukardu ochre (McBryde 1987; Kerwin 2006, 177).
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