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'Faces swollen and sticky with tears and dust, they clung to one another.'
Jimmy Casim was a teenager when he came to Australia in the 1880s. He was a deckhand on an Indian cargo vessel, of which his uncle was the bosun (Fraser: 2003). At that time, ships from the subcontinent delivered teams of Afghan cameleers and their camels to Australian ports for the 'opening up' of the inland. They were heady days when his uncle's ship made several trips a year back and forth from Karachi to Fremantle (State Records Office). Jimmy became ill on one of those voyages so with his uncle's encouragement to seek help he 'jumped ship' only to remain the Western Australia for the rest of his life (Fraser: 2013; Goodall et al. 57). Like others from his part of the world the young seafarer merged into a life of indentured labour, and he merged with Aboriginal peoples. Jimmy Casim was my maternal great-grandfather.' (Introduction)
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