The first Ceylonese Migrant family Down Under

Dr Dinesh Palipana

Last Wednesday Daily Mirror reported about a Sri Lanka-born Doctor being named Queensland’s ‘Australian of the Year’. 
In a remarkable coincidence, exactly five years ago on 16 November 2015, the writer contributed an article sub-titled, Lankans CONQUER Bundaberg, Queensland on Nov 18, 1882’; the main title being,‘Australian town ‘Badagini’ named by Sinhala migrant labour in the 1880s?

This article received wide attention after it was reproduced in two Sri Lankan-sponsored magazines in Australia.
Little archival research is available on the earliest Ceylonese, the sixth-largest Asian community in Australia who made the long sea journey Down Under apart from Pandula Endagame’s and Dr Wickrema Weerasooriya’s (former High Commissioner) research notes. The Australian government’s ‘white racism’ policies introduced regulations disallowing non-white immigrants from buying land or buildings during the early to mid 19th century; white-settler privileges were denied to them and prevented them from any entrepreneurial activity, including the prohibition of getting pearling licenses and property ownership.

"Real Sri Lankan mass migration commenced in the 1870s when the administrators in Queensland worked on the possibility of bringing manual labour from Sri Lanka for the sugar cane industry, ironically, at time tea plantations here imported labour from South India"

Dr Dinesh Palipana, the Sri Lankan-born founder of ‘Doctors with Disabilities Australia’ and a recent law graduate as well as the doctor for the Gold Coast Titans physical disability rugby league team, a senior resident at the Gold Coast Hospital, was named Queensland’s 2021 Australian of the Year, the report said.
Dr Palipana, the first quadriplegic medical graduate and medical intern in Queensland, was introduced as a truly inspiring person and a much-deserved recipient of the Queensland Australian of the Year Award by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Major William O’dean, a Malay and his Sinhalese wife Eve, along with their three children were the first Sri Lankans who migrated to Australia, as per records. It was in 1816, the British colonial masters ‘banished for life’ convict O’dean following a court-martial. Glennys Ferguson, a sixth-generation descendent of O’dean, who published a 20-page well-researched article titled ‘First Ceylonese in Australia’ says he was allowed to accompany his family, a concession granted to all convicts then, and they reached Sydney on 16 February 1816. Apart from Ferguson, M.T. (Tony) Saldin, wrote about the O’deans in ‘The Ceylankan’, the leading Sri Lankan magazine published in Australia under the title, ‘Malay Mercenaries in military service of Kandyan Kings’. Another scholar, Paul Thomas, an academic attached to Monash University, Melbourne, researching on the earliest Ceylonese immigrants, wrote recently on the role played by O’dean as a Malay interpreter in Australia and it was published in ‘Indonesia and Malay world’. 
As Ferguson remarked, research was tough due to the reason that the name O’dean has been spelt differently in many places; he using two first names, William and John. His tombstone in St Stephan’s Church Comberton, Sydney says, John Odean.

The real Sri Lankan mass migration commenced in the 1870s when the administrators in Queensland worked on the possibility of bringing manual labour from Sri Lanka for the sugar cane industry, ironically, at time tea plantations here imported labour from South India. 
The collapse of the coffee industry followed by a depression and the moving out of villagers of their homelands by colonial planters motivated the Ceylonese to look for greener pastures Down Under.
 It was in 1882 that a group of 480 landed in Bundaberg, a city on the East coast. In 1870 the first ‘shipment’ of Lankans to arrive in Queensland. They had to work in sugarcane plantations and were notably known commonly as Cingalese, irrespective of racial or ethnic differences. 

"Dr Dinesh Palipana, the Sri Lankan-born founder of ‘Doctors with Disabilities Australia’ and a recent law graduate as well as the doctor for the Gold Coast Titans physical disability rugby league team, a senior resident at the Gold Coast Hospital, was named Queensland’s 2021 Australian of the Year, the report said."

A community of Ceylonese origin was believed to exist on Thursday Island, (an island situated in the Northern tip of Queensland) since the early 20th century. However, before this, there were Ceylonese divers who were taken by Ceylonese entrepreneurs in small numbers for the pearl fishing industry. 
This consignment along with Jewelry craftsmen left Galle harbour for Torres Strait in North Queensland.
More generally, the governing Queenslanders in both Mackay and Bundaberg found that the Lankans employed were an aggressively self-determining lot who would not be subjugated to the oppression of whites. They continued to file petitions against employers.

Sri Lankans Conquer Queensland
The popular newssheet of Queensland, ‘Bundaberg Star’ reported on 17 November 1882, “Cingalese! Cingalese! The arrival of the coolies.” 
We have related in detail how the brave Lankas achieved this feat in our above article, hence only a short reference appears here. Devonshire left Colombo with 482 people, including 11 Malays, 8 Moors and 14 Sinhala women with eight children, but when? There are conflicting reports on the date according to two types of research; was it November 14, as Kamaldeen believes or mid-September 1882, according to former DIG Arthur C. Dep’s findings? 

White Australians in Bundaberg resisted the move to engage foreign labour, who organized themselves forming a powerful anti-Cingalese group named Anti-Cooley League [ACL] which labelled the idea as an invasion. The state did not intervene and considered it a purely a private business by the planting community. Along with the Cingalese, Japanese, Malays and Chinese migrants sailed to Queensland in the late 19th century. 
While most immigrants suffered, a few capable men who travelled to Queensland before the 1870s on their initiative and through sponsorship by relatives, managed to override legislative restrictions and engage in the lucrative trade in the pearling belt. 

Farming entrepreneurs in Queensland’s coffee and sugar plantations sought cheap labour from migrants of colour due to the hostile nature of Aboriginal labour. Apart from the illiterate manual coolies, a fair number of small-time tradesmen, craftsmen, artisans and job-seeking urban youth migrated, seeking enhanced prospects.   
However, in a major downfall of the pearl industry in the early 20th century, most of the Lankans in Bundaberg and Mackay moved out. Some even returned to Ceylon, while others travelled to New South Wales and Victoria in search of greener pastures. The rest, a very few, settled down marrying and mixing with Aborigines or Europeans.
Coming back to the O’deans, the family his wife and three children arrived on February 7, 1816. 

The ‘Sydney Gazette’ carried the headline news, “...the appearance of this family is truly interesting; and the more so when the feeling mind consider that misfortune has brought them 
to a part of the world in which it is scarcely conceivable that they can find any means of contributing to their own support.” O’dean lost no time in obtaining work as a watcher in the State’s Dockyard. Our article published exactly four years ago [http://www.dailymirror.lk/95573/australian-town-badagini-named-by-sinhala-migrant-labour-in-1880s] carried a detailed account of the naming of the town, Baddagini. 

The writer can be contacted at – [email protected]