'I said no' – Nie's refusal and the troubling question of Pacific slavery in Australia

A Pacific island woman with a child planting sugar cane in a field, Bingara, Queensland, c 1897. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

In 1881 Nie (also known as Nai), a Pacific Islander woman, walked off “Virginia” plantation, south of Maryborough, in the colony of Queensland.

Crossing through cane fields, she fled in the thick tropical heat to nearby “Gootchie” plantation to take up work as a domestic servant.