Trade war? China was buying goods from Australia long before 1788

From the 1700s (at least), well before the colony of New South Wales was established in 1788, the Aboriginal people of northern Australia were trading trepang (sea cucumber) with fishermen from Makassar, a port-city on the island of Sulawesi (now Indonesia).

The “Macassan” fishermen would sail to Australia around December each year, with the north-west monsoonal winds.

They would spend months living on Australian beaches, collecting and processing the trepang, before returning home with their haul.

Their catch was destined for China.

“The north coast of Australia, southern China and Makassar were all connected by an international trading network that centred on trepang,” curator Alison Mercieca, of the National Museum of Australia, said in a 2008 lecture.

That trade network matured over centuries, and became a popular source of food for the Chinese market.

“Throughout the nineteenth century it would appear that a majority of trepang traded from Makassar was supplied by the fleets which sailed to Arnhem Land and perhaps even supplying about a quarter of the total Chinese market by the mid-nineteenth century,” she said.