Across the street from our Courthouse B&B in Broome, in northwest Western Australia, was, not surprisingly, the city's Courthouse in the eponymous square! This photo doesn't make it clear, but Steven and I soon realized Broome's most common building material was corrugated metal. I can only figure it must hold up best during the area's wet season, which lasts from about November to April.
Courthouse Square:
One of the oddest things in Broome was that sidewalks often began on one side of the street, only to end abruptly at an intersection, when pedestrians then had to cross the street to continue on the sidewalk.
As we walked through the Chinatown district again, we reached the Roebuck Bay Lookout, which offered sweeping views over the bay and Dampier Creek. It celebrated Aboriginal Yawuru history and featured artwork created by Indigenous artists.
The previous day, Steven and I encountered several works of art on the Broome Cultural Trail. It seemed particularly fitting that, on our way to a pearling tour, we saw The Pearling Pioneers sculpture. It depicted three key people in the pearling industry and included plaques honoring those who sailed the sea and dove for pearls, as well as one paying tribute to Indigenous pearl divers.
The day before, we'd signed up for the Pearl Lugger Tour offered by Willie Creek Pearls, one of the many pearl shops, knowing that pearls were synonymous with Broome. The Australian South Sea Cultured Pearl, or 'Broome Pearl,' is produced by Pinctada maxima, the largest pearl-producing oyster in the world. This specific type is native to the nutrient-rich, pristine waters of the Kimberley region and thrives because of the water quality, temperature, and tides. These perfect conditions mean that the pearls produced in this region are the largest, most lustrous, and, therefore, the most sought-after pearls in the whole world, at least as described by the shop!
Slavery in pearling: A sign on the shop wall said that the descendants of Aboriginal and Asian divers, known as saltwater cowboys, and lugger owners involved in the shell and pearling industries, were proud of their history. Though all divers endured extreme conditions, it can't be forgotten that "parts of the industry were founded on appalling treatment of Aboriginal people."
Pearling's early history, which began in the mid-1800s, was brutal. Aboriginal men, women, and children were captured, chained, and forced to dive, resulting in many dying from the bends, or decompression sickness. Survivors were left stranded on islands so they could be "rounded up" the next season.
One woman's story: "My Nan was Ida Andrews... She'd been taken (in 1912) ... and was forced to walk (for) two or three days ... (and was) placed on the pearling boats and made to dive for pearls. She was 12 years old."
Some of you have rightfully commented on the similarly egregious treatment of Indigenous people in Canada, but I don't recall ever hearing of it being referred to as "slavery," or people being "rounded up" like cattle as we read in Australia. Have I been away too long to understand more recent revelations of how some Canadians treated Indigenous people? Please let me know.
The adjacent building was the shop's tender store, where pearling equipment was stored or laid up during the wet or off-season. During the height of Broome's pearling industry, there were twenty tender stores in the city!
Shine, our excellent guide, pointed out that oysters were hardy creatures that can live up to 24 years. This "Grandma" was the largest-producing shell, and its age could be counted by the number of lines of nacre, just like tree rings.
Shine explained how blackbirding, one of the biggest travesties against the Aboriginal people, took place during the pearling industry. Men were forced to free-dive, completely naked, up to 20m to the bottom of the ocean. They had to pick up a grain of sand to prove that they'd reached the ocean floor if they weren't able to find a shell. Pregnant women were thought to have the largest lung capacity, so they were sent down, as were children. As Shine said, there are never enough 'sorries' to atone for decades of treatment. But the memorial of the woman diver I included in the last post publicly commemorated those who lost their lives in free diving.
I read with interest a poster describing the varieties and characteristics of pearls from around the world: South Seas Pearls, Keshi Pearls, Tahitian Pearls, Freshwater Pearls, and Gold Pearls. Another poster mentioned a pearl's five "virtues": luster, complexion, shape, color, and size. I had no clue that Australian South Sea Pearls are the largest in the world and can occasionally exceed 20mm in width!
Working with Mother Nature: In cultured pearl farming, a 'seed' is surgically implanted inside an oyster by a trained technician to help nature to create the world's only gem produced by a living organism. A single pearl can take up to two years to be produced from the time an oyster is seeded. Fortunately, modern farming practices allow the process to be repeated up to four times in an oyster's lifetime.
The adjacent building was the shop's tender store, where pearling equipment was stored or laid up during the wet or off-season. During the height of Broome's pearling industry, there were twenty tender stores in the city!
By this point in our trip to Western Australia, we knew to expect, before the talk began, the customary acknowledgment of the Traditional Owners of the land and waters where we were meeting and the need "to pay respects to the Elders, past, present, and emerging."
Shine, our excellent guide, pointed out that oysters were hardy creatures that can live up to 24 years. This "Grandma" was the largest-producing shell, and its age could be counted by the number of lines of nacre, just like tree rings.
Broome was built on the mother-of-pearl industry, but it has evolved, with pearl bone now being used in biomedicine in an exciting industry development! Shine announced that the new company, working with the shop and a local university, is close to handing over the product for human testing, which would be placed in bones to allow cartilage to grow.
Broome controlled over 80 percent of the world's mother-of-pearl button industry, as Broome was "built on buttons," according to the Willie Creek shop. Shine was holding a mother-of-pearl shell, from which buttons were punched out.
Pat: How you'd have loved to add some of these mother-of-pearl buttons to your extensive button collection!
Shine said that when the first settlers came, they saw Aboriginal people wearing pearls and thought they could make money from this. Mother-of-pearl was traded with inland tribes as far east as Uluru, formerly called Ayers Rock, in the dead center of Australia. Adolescent boys drew or etched ridges on the shell as a rite of passage. No two patterns were exactly the same, because they marked each boy's story through to manhood.
Shine explained how blackbirding, one of the biggest travesties against the Aboriginal people, took place during the pearling industry. Men were forced to free-dive, completely naked, up to 20m to the bottom of the ocean. They had to pick up a grain of sand to prove that they'd reached the ocean floor if they weren't able to find a shell. Pregnant women were thought to have the largest lung capacity, so they were sent down, as were children. As Shine said, there are never enough 'sorries' to atone for decades of treatment. But the memorial of the woman diver I included in the last post publicly commemorated those who lost their lives in free diving.
Unfortunately, Shine didn't specify the timeframe when a fence was built around Broome that prohibited the 3,500 Aboriginal workers from entering after a certain hour.
The photo portrayed pearling masters, some of the richest men in the country, who kept all the pearls and dressed head to toe in white, on the jetty. Shine said that the men often changed their clothes up to seven times a day, as they never wanted to look like the working class if a speck of red dirt appeared on their clothing. They had so much money from the pearls that money wasn't an object, so their clothes were sent to China to be laundered!
The recovery after World War I was slow. Once plastic, and therefore plastic buttons, were introduced, the results were catastrophic for Broome's economy. By the 1930s, no White pearl masters remained, and Japanese crews had effectively taken over the industry. Shine commented that Japanese divers were the backbone of Broome's pearling industry and that "they were excited to come to Broome."
During World War II, Japanese air raids caused the deaths of 80 people on March 3, 1942, in Broome. The Japanese later confessed they thought it was an Army base, not an "innocent town." Planes from that raid are still in Roebuck Bay because its unique sand makeup is like concrete.
Once Japanese Kokichi Mikimoto created the world's first cultured pearls, their introduction in Australia in 1956 marked the start of a revolution in Broome's pearling industry. Shells were used as instruments and decorations, as only one in ten thousand had a pearl.
Shine then took us to look at two of the ten luggers still in existence in Broome. Each lugger had ten crew on board: one skipper, two tenders or divers' communicators, and the rest working on equipment, shucking oysters, etc. The DMcD lugger had finished its service, so it was left to age naturally, according to Shine.
The next part of the tour took place in the Dive Room, where Shine remarked that the main part of the pearling season took place from March through December. Once conditions became more humane, divers wore a completely watertight suit: the helmet weighed 20-45 kg, and the shoes weighed 12-15 kg each, with two layers of metal and steel toes so the divers' feet wouldn't be hurt by the shells. The divers' belt, with front and back plates to keep them upright, added another 17 kg, for a total weight of 100 kg! The smaller Japanese divers could get away with equipment that 'only' weighed 60 kg.
As the tenders communicated with the diver through Morse code on tugs of air hose, they were the diver's best friends. Shine mentioned that Western Australia had every possible danger on land and sea: jellyfish, whales, crocodiles, and sharks. The latter could cut the air hose to pieces because the luggers were constantly in shark territory, and divers were underwater for 15-45 minutes at a time.
A diver's career span was only ten years, because they so often suffered from the bends. Divers collected as many shells as possible in their baskets to make each dive go faster. They purposely didn't come up slowly because it took more time and meant less money, but the quick ascent caused the bends.
Once back on board the lugger, the diver had a 15-minute break for coffee and two cigarettes, which they believed increased lung capacity. Then it was back to the depths, time and time again, for a 10- to 12-hour day, sunrise to sunset, 6 days a week. 1973 was the last year dives were undertaken in a hardhat system.
Now, Australian law mandates that divers go down once, rest for four to five hours, then dive again.
Shine commented that pearl meat now costs AUD 200 or US$433 a kilo. When it comes out of the shell, it is very tough, so it should be cooked like a ceviche with chili, lime and lemon juices, ginger, coriander, hoisin, and sesame oil. I'm neither a fish nor a spice lover, but I was curious enough to find out what pearl meat tastes like. I wouldn't want it regularly, but it was tasty!
Our tour then moved back to the tender store, where we witnessed a live demonstration of Shine harvesting a pearl. She began by telling us that the pearl meat we'd just eaten was actually the Pinctada maxima's abductor muscle, not a very fun term, and the mantle tissue produced the nacre. Oysters are hermaphrodites, so they can switch from male to female, with the male being the creamy color and the female being orange inside.
Oysters don't naturally make pearls. Shine said, "We, the gods of oysters, make pearls by implanting strips from Mississippi mud shells into oysters to allow pearls to grow." Think of the mud shell as an irritant that is grafted to help form a pearl sac and trick the animal into reacting to the foreign bead. The oyster is returned to the company's controlled farm in the ocean or a freshwater lake for two years. Each panel or basket of oysters has to be flipped over, cleaned, and checked for parasites every two weeks.
Oysters don't naturally make pearls. Shine said, "We, the gods of oysters, make pearls by implanting strips from Mississippi mud shells into oysters to allow pearls to grow." Think of the mud shell as an irritant that is grafted to help form a pearl sac and trick the animal into reacting to the foreign bead. The oyster is returned to the company's controlled farm in the ocean or a freshwater lake for two years. Each panel or basket of oysters has to be flipped over, cleaned, and checked for parasites every two weeks.
During the two-year process, the oyster constantly covers the bead with smooth, shiny microscopic layers of nacre or mother-of-pearl. At the end of that time, workers open the mollusks to collect the finished pearls, which are then cleaned, sorted, and graded according to the five pearl 'virtues.' Compared to saltwater pearls, freshwater pearls are cheaper because they take less time and are easier to produce.
Taking care of pearls: Shine emphasized that pearls should be the first thing on and the last item taken off. She said it was important for pearls not to come into contact with lotion, sunscreen, bug spray, etc, because pearls interact with products. Shine also strongly advised people to wipe their pearls after wearing them and store them away from other jewelry. I knew none of these tips. Did you?
The 'surgery' then began on the live oyster!
Luckily, there was a pearl inside the oyster! That concluded our superb tour, unless you count the standard escort to the shop, where we were encouraged to look at, i.e., shop for, their magnificent pearls!
Because someone on the tour was interested, the pearl that Shine had just harvested was immediately appraised, cleaned, and subsequently sold for AUD 225, about US$165.
The shop was selling this gorgeous 20mm pearl for AUD 100,000, roughly US$72,000!
That wasn't quite in our ballpark, so we bought one of the oyster shells instead as a souvenir of the fascinating morning. Once the staff removed all the accumulated grime, it gleamed again like it probably had ages ago.
Janina and Sarah: Thought of you both when I noticed the mother-of-pearl signs on the bathroom doors!
Next post: I also intended to write about our visit to Broome's adjoining ethnic and religious-based cemeteries in this post, but it is long enough already, and the cemeteries deserve more than a passing mention.
Posted on September 8th, 2026, from our home in Littleton, Colorado, where we're getting excited about next week's trip to the Spanish and French Basque areas, a drive through southern France, and far more! Please take care of yourself and your loved ones.
