Social history since colonisation: Visitors and settlers
The first non-Aboriginal people to visit and have sustained contact with Aboriginal people in northern Australia were the Macassans from Sulawesi and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago. They travelled to northern Australia every wet season, probably from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, in sailing boats called praus. Their main aim was to harvest trepang (sea cucumber), but they also collected turtle shell, pearls, pearl shell, timber and buffalo horn for Asian markets (Press et al. 1995). Aboriginal people were involved in harvesting and processing the trepang, and in collecting and exchanging the other goods.
There is no evidence that the Macassans spent time on the coast of Kakadu but there is evidence of some contact between Macassan culture and Aboriginal people of the Kakadu area. Among the artefacts from archaeological digs in the Park are glass and metal fragments that probably came from the Macassans, either directly or through trade with the Coburg Peninsula people.
The British attempted a number of settlements on the northern Australian coast in the early part of the nineteenth century: Fort Dundas on Melville Island in 1824; Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay in 1829; and Victoria Settlement (Port Essington) on the Coburg Peninsula in 1839. They were anxious to secure the north of Australia before the French or Dutch, who had colonised islands further north. The British settlements were all subsequently abandoned for a variety of reasons, such as lack of water and fresh food, sickness and isolation.
It is difficult to assess the impact of these settlements on the local Aboriginal people and the type of relationship that developed between them and the British. Certainly, some Aboriginal labour was used at the settlements. Exposure to new sickness was an ever-present danger. As in other parts of Australia, disease and the disruption to society it caused devastated the local Aboriginal population. Accounts from settlers at Port Essington tell of an influenza outbreak among the Aboriginal population in 1847, which reduced them to such a state of destitution and wretchedness that it aroused the pity of all who came in contact with them. As the season passed, the disease spread until it reached epidemic proportions, with many dying and the others too sick and weak to help themselves.
Disease and other social consequences also took a huge toll on the population of the Alligator Rivers region. It is estimated that the area between the Adelaide and East Alligator Rivers supported an Aboriginal population of 2000 in pre-European times. There are now only about 500 Aboriginal people living in Kakadu.
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