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PastMasters

We are a DGR approved, not-for-profit Heritage Research Institute for North Australia

Kilwa's beaches in East Africa have yielded tiny copper coins & broken pottery. The coins begin c950AD & the pottery includes Chinese Celadon (qingci) of a similar age. Kilwa coins c900 years old were found on Arnhemland's Wessel Islands in 1944. Kilwa was sacked by the Portuguese in 1513 - they were established on Timor in 1515 so were they the vector. The last millennium is a useful period in wh

ich to explore the notion of vessels running south to avoid pirates or to stage at freshwater sites moving westward to Cape Wessel where the fresh SE Trade would carry them northwards and home. Our work is an amalgam of western science and Aboriginal cultural knowledge to winnow hard fact from myth and lead us to the evidence of Australia's earliest visitors.

10/09/2026

One of the NTs ‘Territory Treasures’, a rare African coin found on the north Australian coast in 1945. Now held out of sight in a back room in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, this and other treasures deserve to be in Darwin where they would be appreciated as part of our unique heritage.

09/09/2026

The new Larrakia Cultural Centre in Darwin is now open.

07/09/2026

We are pleased to announce that our book ‘Territory Treasures’—on the search for clues on North Australia’s African coins—will be held from 5-7pm on Friday October 16 at Burnett House, the historic, two-storey tropical home located in Darwin’s Myilly Point National Trust District. If you’d like to be there and meet the PM team, please register by emailing [email protected]

04/09/2026

In 1945 in a tidal creek like this one on the Wessels, WW2 serviceman Morry Isenberg found five coins from the Swahili Sultanate of Kilwa (in what is now Tanzania). Several were over 900 years old and have rarely been found outside of Kilwa and Zanzibar. One has been found in Oman on the Arabian peninsula and another Great Zimbabwe so this was truly a unique and remarkable find!

02/09/2026

The Harleian world map (also called the Dauphin map, dated around 1542–1547) is a large, hand-drawn 16th-century manuscript map created by the Dieppe School of Cartography for the French royal family. It once belonged to Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, which is how it got the name "Harleian". It is housed in the British Library. The map shows a massive southern landmass south of Indonesia labeled "Jave la Grande". This landmass has sparked long-running historical debates over whether early Portuguese or French sailors mapped parts of Australia's coast.

30/08/2026

Fred Gray's 1940s postcards: In the early 1940s trepanger and secular missionary Fred Gray of Umbakumba, Groote Eylandt, sold garden produce and photos of traditional indigenous life of the Andindilyakwa people to fund his station on the east coast of Groote. He'd paddle his outrigger across the lagoon to the Qantas Base - a link in the then Brisbane to Darwin flight path for Catalinas in the early days of commercial flight. To transiting guests and the Base staff, he would sell fruit, vegetables and his postcards. The images are thought to be mostly of Groote Eylandt traditional scenes - of a hunting party, of a dance/ceremony and a fishing group with dugout canoe - but the one of the two pregnant women may be from Thursday Island. Fred visited there frequently from his Groote base to sell pearl shell and pearl produce [and to visit the dentist]. These photos were purchased by an Australian Air Force officer who was based at the Umbakumba Qantas Base in the aftermath of the 19 February 1942 Japanese attack on Darwin. It is thought the photos date to the late 1930s-early 1940s.

28/08/2026

Thank you for your wonderful comments on our work. Our broader project is Australia’s Top End in the context of Indian Ocean maritime trade in days of old. Specifically, we want to know the significance of those medieval African coins that were found on the Wessels in northeast Arnhem Land in 1945. In mid-October in Darwin, we will reveal all with the launch of our new book. It’s called ‘Territory Treasures’ and it’s the product of years of study, fieldwork, and collaboration with Yolngu rangers and traditional owners. We will soon be sending out details of the event and all are welcome, though we may need to put a limit on numbers. The PMs will be flying in from all quarters, and it will be a great opportunity to hear a yarn or two about Australia’s hidden history. Details for registering will be sent anon.

27/08/2026

This is a page where we share our love for Top End history and culture and our audience is made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, including many Territorians, as well as people from Makassar and elsewhere in Indonesia, and around the world. We’ve seen comments recently from Sweden, Portugal, US, Tanzania, and many other countries. We welcome the sharing of contrarian views and debate is encouraged. We ask only that you be guided by civility in your communications. As a global site, let us know where you are checking in from.

26/08/2026

More on the Indigenous Australian ‘totemic embrace’, a concept that the founder of sociology, Emile Durkheim, used as the basis for his theory of religion and the religious life. While researching the topic in the 1990s, IM attended a Darwin conference on Ecology and Politics where the subject of ‘ownership’ of natural species inspired an enthusiastic discussion. One Yolngu from Galiwin’ku told the audience that his name honoured the spirit of the magpie goose. A Bininj from Gunbalanya said that she was the caretaker of a major magpie goose site, a striking hill overlooking Kakadu National Park covered in rock art. Another Yolngu, from Ramangining, shared that he was the custodian of sacred magpie goose songs and dances. An NT government representative interjected at this point saying that he didn’t care what anyone believed because the Crown owned the magpie goose. The conversation came to a standstill and the session ended. For Yolngu, the Gurrumattji (magpie goose) is a totem of the Dhuwa moiety Djambarrpuyngu clan but traditionally there were no restrictions when it came to eating this much-loved Top End delicacy. Other totems remind the people of the old law, ‘Dhuwa eats Yirritja’ and vice versa.

25/08/2026

Indigenous Australian religion is still poorly understood in academia. As anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss said back in 1962, it is not clear what it means when Aboriginal people say “The life of a bat is the life of a man, and the life of an owl is a woman’s life”. What he did say was that the totem was much more than a symbol of a group or a physical resource. Rather, totems were “good to think with.” While at Shepherdson College in the 1980s, PM Ian McIntosh worked with Warramiri elder David Burrumarra to create a comprehensive list of the totemic significance of every fish, bird, animal, reptile, tree, plant, insect and so on. The project was to be a resource for Yolngu kids and it was called the ‘totemic embrace.’ The kids learned that the white cockatoo is a totem for the Dhuwa moiety Rirratjingu clan, but through a different story it was a symbol for the entire Yirritja moiety. They learned that the dingo is Dhuwa in Dhuwa lands and Yirritja in Yirritja lands, and why the galpan (catfish) is ceremonially important to everyone. And so on. During their conversations, IM documented the clan affiliations of the totems, and whether there was a ceremony, sacred design, or story, connected with them. Burrumarra was a towering intellect and the annotations in IMs field notes give a sense of the process. For example, when IM mentioned the freshwater mussel Djarrgit, Burrumarra reminisced about his life in the early 1930s at Caledon Bay with Wongggu (the King of Arnhem Land). He remembered Wonggu singing for that shellfish, and said that while it might be small, it has a big story. Several short essays on the totemic embrace can be found in the free e-book ‘Between Two Worlds’ available on the PM website.

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