Journeys to and from a ‘White’ Australia
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Travel of any kind was an enormous undertaking if you did not have the right skin colour or ethnicity in the Australia of the Immigration Restriction Act (1901). Peter Drew’s portraits document this exclusion based on race. Codifying racial restrictions into law directly might have angered neighbouring nations or the British ‘motherland’, so the actual method of excluding people was a clever lie: a dictation test that could be optimised to be impossible to pass. Only a select few possessing exceptional standing were exempt from the dictation ‘test’. These are their portraits.
Drew’s work uncovers that Australia has a rich multiethnic history. White Australia was an ideal, a desperate attempt to roll back the realities of an actual working society. The 1911 census lists people of 34 origins, including vague categories like “Non-European” at a time when general census-counted population had not reached 5 million. For the people that Peter Drew immortalised, the futile effort to create a racially homogenous Australia impacted their lives in many ways: where they could travel, what businesses they could undertake and above all if they could dare call Australia their home.
Could you enter Australia?
The dictation test was an officially sanctioned red herring, a tool of exclusion that could be flexibly adapted to the needs of the immigration official. The official rules from 1927 clearly state that, “If the Officer has good reason to believe that the person to be tested could write in English, a passage of not less than fifty words in some other European language may be selected”. This included hiring contractors that could speak obscure languages - failure could always be arranged.
"Immigration into the Commonwealth... is prohibited, namely:—
a) Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer a passage of fifty words in length in an European language directed by the officer..."
Immigration Restriction Act 1901
The test was extremely effective – an internal document from the Collector of Customs written in 1911 proudly states that “The number of such persons who have passed that test [since 1901] has been practically nil…” (National Archives of Australia, A1, 1912/2383).
The implementation of the test was ruthless. When the SS Clan Ranald was wrecked off the coast of Adelaide, the surviving crew that was deemed to be ‘coloured’ had to take the test immediately after being brought into safe quarters. As the report from 2/2/1909 states: “Nineteen failed in English. Remaining one could pass in English consequently another language will be used.”
