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THE PEARL
This is Cable Beach. With stunning turquoise water and 22 kilometres of pristine white sand, it’s renowned as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
It was named to commemorate the undersea telegraph cable that came ashore here in 1889, linking Australia to Java and the rest of the world.
Many people are surprised to discover that Australia is home to the world’s largest camel herd. There are about 1 million camels roaming wild in the Outback.
I’m on my way to the heart of Broome, often referred to as the ‘Pearl of North West Australia.’ It’s an exotic pearling town at the western gateway to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It’s got a history and culture as rich and vibrant as its landscape.
Here you can ride a camel along Cable Beach, shop for pearls in Chinatown, see dinosaur footprints and birdwatch in Roebuck Bay.
For centuries people of many nationalities have been lured here by the promise of finding their fortunes. There’s treasure to be found here in Broome, so join me as we search for it, because finding this treasure could change your life forever!
BROOME [RUBIBI] AND THE YARUWU
Broome is situated on the land of the Yaruwu people who’ve inhabited this region for centuries. This country has an extraordinary history and the Yaruwu people continue to protect it and ensure that the cultural stories and the well-being of the country and all the life it supports are well maintained.
The Yaruwu people have always had a close connection to their land and the ocean, which is expressed in their six-season yearly cycle. This mosaic design tells the story of natural divisions of the year through flora and fauna typical to each season. Flowering, fruiting and bush tucker plants demonstrate the seasonal changes.
The town’s more recent history is a blend of colourful and often violent tales, now mixed with a modern sophistication. Nowhere is this more exuberantly expressed than in Broome’s old Chinatown.
Once a bustling hub of pearl sheds, billiard saloons, entertainment houses and Chinese eateries, Chinatown is now home to some of the world’s finest pearl showrooms along with a variety of retail outlets. Sidewalk cafés and restaurants add a splash of colour to the pavements.
One of Broome’s fascinating attractions, that has captured the attention and the imagination of pearl divers right through to modern tourists, is the ‘staircase to the moon’. This natural phenomenon is created by the full moon rising over the exposed mudflats at Roebuck Bay at extremely low tide, creating the beautiful optical illusion of a staircase rising up to the moon.
We’re on our way out to an isolated rocky outcrop just off the shore where many people believe that the English buccaneer, William Dampier, was the first European to actually visit Broome’s shores and set foot here in 1688.
He landed here at what is today called Buccaneer Rock in Roebuck Bay, and buried a pirate treasure chest here just over 300 years ago. The locals say you can see his ghost here at night, searching for his lost treasure with a lantern.
Or, maybe you won’t, and for a number of good reasons. One of which is that Dampier never actually landed at Roebuck Bay at all! In fact, he never got to within 200 kilometres of the place.
So we can forget about finding pirate’s treasure here at Broome, even though there is this granite monument built in the form of a sea chest with Dampier’s name and coat of arms, that perpetuates the myth.
In the 1860’s, the first settlers arrived and attempted to develop the area to farm sheep. But drought, dingoes and sometimes hostile Aboriginal tribesmen doomed the venture, and the idea was soon abandoned.
PINCTADA MAXIMA
Broome owes its beginning and continued existence to the giant silver-tip pearl oyster – the Pinctada maxima. It’s the largest pearl shell in the world, and grows here in the waters of Roebuck Bay – on which Broome is situated – and along the shores of Eighty Mile Beach.
The size of the shell was huge in comparison to any other shell available, and caused a sensation in European and American markets. The average size of the Pinctada Maxima shell was 10–20 cm across. And the nacre of the shell had a shimmering interior that also set it apart from the rest.
At this time many objects, but particularly buttons, were made from mother-of pearl, and so it was considered a valuable commodity. Aborigines had been harvesting and trading these huge pearl shells for centuries.
But in 1861 Europeans discovered the new species for the first time. This was the defining year in Broome’s history. Workers from Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Timor soon flooded into the area, lured here by the promise of finding their fortunes.
Thanks to cheap labour – or in the early years, slave labour – the new pearling industry soon boomed. Within a few years Broome was supplying 80% of the world’s mother-of-pearl. And so Broome’s history is inextricably linked to pearls and the associated pearling industry. This is the treasure that attracted people to Broome.
PEARLING LUGGERS AND SLAVERY
And the way they reached this sea-treasure was aboard these pearl boats, called luggers. These working vessels were originally made of wood and were 9 to 10 meters in length. They were built down south in Fremantle and were specifically designed for the pearling industry. Each was equipped with a manual air pump and five lengths of diver’s air hose.
They were the work-horses of the sea and were used to harvest mother-of-pearl in these waters for over one hundred years. In the early 1900’s there were over 400 of these pearl luggers working the waters off Broome.
In the early days of pearl diving, Aboriginal men and women were blackbirded, coerced, into the industry. They were enslaved and forced aboard the pearl boats and made to dive naked with little or no equipment.
Pregnant Indigenous girls were preferred as they were believed to have a superior lung capacity. They worked under atrocious conditions and many lost their lives.
This bronze statue in Pioneer Park poignantly commemorates the Indigenous female divers who, having become pregnant on the pearl luggers, were still forced to dive. It depicts a female diver gasping for air as she proffers up a pearl shell, a small belly protruding above the waves.
It’s a reminder of the contribution these women made to the pearling industry and also of the mistreatment and exploitation of the Indigenous people.
DEEP WATERS, GREAT RISKS
When the shallower waters around Broome had been emptied of pearl shells, it became necessary to move further out to deeper water. Now the only way to reach the precious shells was to use diving suits and massive helmets. The new equipment and increased financial rewards attracted people from many countries to Broome.
The Japanese divers were considered the best, and were especially valued for their experience. They were specialist divers and soon became an indispensable part of the industry.
However, harvesting the treasure from the pearl beds of the ocean did not come cheaply. It was extremely dangerous work. The hundreds of headstones in Broome’s Japanese cemetery provide clear evidence of the risks that came with pearl diving.
The ‘bends’, drowning, sharks and cyclones ended the dreams of many divers. Four devastating tropical cyclones hit the area between 1908 and 1935. Over 100 boats and 300 people were lost during that time. Another 145 deaths occurred due to the bends – when divers spent too long at depth and then ascended to the surface too quickly.
This large stone obelisk honours the Japanese divers who lost their lives in the massive cyclones. In all, 919 Japanese pearl divers are buried in this cemetery – a testimony to the extreme dangers of their profession.
END OF AN ERA
World War II brought disaster to Broome and the pearl industry. In fact pearling virtually stopped. Japanese divers discreetly went home or were interned. And then Broome was attacked and bombed by Japanese aircraft, destroying many of the remaining pearl boats.
After the war the pearling industry recovered to some degree, but the heydays were certainly over. And then disaster struck again. In the 1950’s a crucial new invention hit the market. Yes, the plastic button!
Pearl shells became worthless overnight. The plastic button sealed the fate of the mother-of-pearl industry, but not the fate of Broome.
The development of cultured pearls was perfected by the Japanese, and the pearling industry was secured, but this time by pearls themselves, rather than the shells. Japanese experts were brought to Australia to try their skills on the giant Pinctada maxima.
Broome pearls are some of the most beautiful and sought-after in the world. They mature in half the time of Japanese pearls, and are also twice the size. Within 20 years the town was producing up to 70% of the world’s large cultured pearls. Broome continues to be one of the world’s major suppliers for quality pearls today.
CULTURED PEARLS
I’m on my way to Willie Creek Pearl Farm to find out more about cultured pearls.
I want to find out how technicians seed a live oyster to produce a pearl. Willie Creek is situated about 40 kilometres north of Broome and Cable Beach, on a beautiful and protected turquoise tidal estuary.
Willie Creek manager: So in the wild a pearl is formed when a small irritant makes its way into an oyster. Often we think of it as a grain of sand, but it could be a piece of algae or a pathogen, or something like that, and the oyster’s going to secrete what we call nacre, which is a defence mechanism.
And it’s going to coat that irritant with a substance called nacre, so effectively nullify[ing] any damage that irritant may cause. And over time that nacre will harden, and more layers will be put on, and that’s how a pearl will be formed in the wild.
A cultured pearl, it differs from a natural pearl obviously in the way that we are deliberately trying to form the pearl, so it begins with the divers who are going to be doing what we call drift diving.
And they’ll be down in the habitat of these oysters, down about 20 metres below the surface, and they’re going to be towed behind a boat, and they’re going to be collecting wild shell.
These healthy wild oysters are then brought back to the Willie Creek Farm, where they are then rested for 4 months to acclimatise to their new location prior to pearl seeding.
The oysters are then relaxed and pegged open to allow a highly trained pearl technician to perform the delicate seeding operation in a sterile room on board the vessel or at the pearl farm.
Manager: A technician will plant a seed into the oyster, and he’ll plant it in such a way that hopefully that oyster won’t reject the seed. Now with that seed he is going to plant a bit of mantle tissue which is a part of the oyster that secretes what we call nacre.
Nacre is effectively ‘liquid pearl’ and hopefully that nacre is going to form the pearl sac around the seed, and over two years it’s going to produce a cultured pearl.
The shell is then safely housed within a pearl panel and placed on the ocean floor to undergo a complex turning process, which encourages the development of a round pearl.
Every oyster is pulled up and cleaned once a month using a high pressure cleaner and a knife to get all the barnacles and sea weed off that attaches to the shell, so that the oyster can feed freely. They are also x-rayed to determine the size of the cultured pearl.
Manager: They have a little seed that’s planted in there, and when they pass through the x-ray they’re looking for a little black dot that represents that seed, and that means they’ve accepted the seed and they’re starting to produce a pearl.
That’ll happen 80-90% of the time. They’ll go through, they’ll get a tick. They all head out after their x-ray onto a longline which will be their home for the next couple of years.
The oysters are then transported to farm sites, which provide a pristine environment such as the waters off the coast north of Willie Creek. Oysters thrive in these nutrient rich waters, filtering over 80 litres of water an hour, feeding on the microscopic plankton and other nutrients.
Manager: Their native habitat is about 20 metres below the surface, that’s where the divers collect them from. But after they’ve gone through their x-ray and they end up on what we call a longline, [so] this would be out in the open water.
They’ll be hanging from buoys, and they’ll be about 2-3 metres below the surface of the water. With our big tides around here, round the Kimberley, when the tides come in it’s going to have the panel up here, spinning around. Tide goes out, vice versa.
So it cuts out the need for a diver to go down and flip the panel, and the tides are doing the work for us, hopefully making a nice even coating around the pearl.
The pearls are extracted from the oyster and replaced or re-seeded with another nucleus about the same size as the pearl that was removed. If an 8mm pearl is removed, it’s replaced with an 8mm nucleus that will hopefully become a 10mm pearl in 2 years time.
Manager: They can do this up to 4 times, so an oyster can produce 4 pearls in its lifetime.
The difference between a first seeded pearl and a fourth seeded pearl is going to be the size, because they’re going to put in the same seed as the pearl they’ve just taken out of the oyster.
You want a bigger pearl, but your chances of getting a nice pearl come down per seeding, so by the time you’re at a fourth seeded pearl you might be looking for a nice big one, but you’re probably down around a 5 or 10% chance of getting a really nice pearl from fourth-seeded, whereas on a first-seeded pearl you’re probably up around 80-90% chance of getting a good pearl.
The oysters are then returned to the sea where they are again suspended vertically about 3 meters below the surface and the monthly cleaning process continues for another 2 years. This completes the second seeding cycle.
After a further two years the oyster is again x-rayed and the whole process is repeated again. As oysters age, the rate of nacre deposition declines, and so oysters are generally only seeded three times over a six year period.
2% of all oysters are seeded four times over an 8-year period, so most large lustrous Australian South Sea pearls will take 3 seedings and six years to develop.
A pearl’s value is determined by the five pearl virtues: size, shape, colour, surface and lustre.
Sales lady: The first thing we look at is of course the size – [at the] end of the day, the bigger the better. Then the shape, then the colour and the lucky last two being the lustre and then of course the complexion marks.
The shape is all personal preference, but we do aim for that nice round pearl. It is very hard to find a round pearl, but nonetheless [the] next thing being the colour. Of course we want that nice moonlight white, [but] we also produce white and gold pearls here in Australia.
Nice shiny lustre is something great to look for, and minimal blemishes. End of the day, blemishes are kind of good things…
These Australian South Sea Pearls are the most highly prized of all pearls and are regarded as the finest, largest and most beautiful pearls in the world.
The appeal and attraction of these magnificent Australian South Sea pearls is nothing new. Pearl’s are the world’s oldest gem. For thousands of years pearls have been revered as one of the world’s most beautiful and magical gems. With its warm inner glow and shimmering iridescence, pearls have been one of the most highly prized and sought-after gems.
And you can understand why, when you look at this magnificent specimen. This is a priceless pearl. It ‘s the world’s largest fine quality pearl, the ‘Pride of Broome.’ It was grown at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm not far from Broome, in 2006. It measures 22.24mm in diameter, 70mm in circumference and weighs 15.75 grams.
PEARL OF GREAT VALUE
Holding this precious and priceless pearl reminds me of a wonderful short story that Jesus told. It’s found in Matthew 13:45,46:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.
When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
Here Jesus tells us about a pearl merchant who goes searching for fine pearls. He finds a very special one, a pearl of immense value. He is so taken by this pearl that he must have it, and so sells everything he owns in order to buy it.
This one pearl, this one thing, is worth everything! Nothing else compares, nothing else matters. He must have it! And so the pearl merchant sells everything he owns in order to get that one pearl.
So, what does this story, this parable, mean? Well, a parable is an illustration, a story designed to teach a lesson. A parable is an earthly story with a spiritual truth. So what truth is Jesus sharing with us through this parable? What does it mean?
Well, the pearl represents Jesus. He’s the pearl of great price. It’s worth giving up everything in order to have Jesus. You and I are the pearl merchant. We go searching for the pearl of great price – Jesus. When we find Him, it’s worth giving up everything in order to have Jesus.
ROLE REVERSAL
But there’s another way of looking at this parable:
Instead of thinking of the pearl merchant as you, think of him as God. So now the roles have been reversed. Instead of you being the pearl merchant, think of God going through the marketplace looking for the pearl of great price.
Now the story is different. Now the pearl of great value is… you!
You are worth everything to God. God values you so much, that He was willing to sell everything, give up everything, in order to have you and to be with you.
And what does God ‘sell’ in order to make His purchase? Well, the better question is “Who?” Who did God give in order to make His purchase? Jesus – Jesus His only Son. It cost God everything to make you His.
God sees you, as the pearl of great value, worth even the life and suffering of Jesus, His own Son.
In telling this beautiful story about the pearl of great value, Jesus wants you to know that there is nothing more precious to God than you. To God, you are the one thing, worth everything. You are the pearl of great value.
PRAYER
If you would like to thank God for His great and unconditional love for you, why not do that right now as we pray?
Dear Heavenly Father. Today we have considered the value of pearls. But more importantly we have been reminded of your great and unconditional love for us. May we always remember just how much you love us, and that you accept us just as we are.
And so Lord, we come to you today, to accept Jesus and your great love for us. Please guide us now as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus and prepare for His soon return. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The story of Broome and the history of the pearling industry certainly is fascinating. And it’s been a privilege to learn about pearls and to actually hold a priceless pearl.
But perhaps more importantly, it’s reassuring to know that we are
of immense value to God, that we are worth everything to God. It’s such good news to know that to God, we are ‘the pearl of great value.’
SPECIAL OFFER
If you’d like to know more about God’s great love for you and His plan for you and our planet, then I’d like to tell you about the free gift we have. It’s an inspiring booklet called The One and Only.
This book shares the secret of finding true happiness in our lives. And it shares the good news of God’s great love for us. This book is our gift to you and is absolutely free. There is no cost or obligation whatsoever. Here’s the information you need:
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If you’ve enjoyed today’s journey, be sure to join us again next week when we will share another of life’s journeys together, and experience another new and thought-provoking perspective on the peace, insight, understanding and hope that only the Bible can give us.
The Incredible Journey truly is television that changes lives! Until next week, remember the ultimate destination of life’s journey,
“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death nor sorrow nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” [Revelation 21: 1, 3]
