'This issue of Queensland Review makes no argument about Queensland in particular. If an implicit argument about Queensland might be imposed on the papers presented here, it is that historically, the polyethnic qualities of northern townships like Broome, Darwin and Thursday Island, present such strong similarities, and read so differently from the more profuse southern histories, that the differences of experience between geographic regions like north and south, or between pearling belt and metropolis, appear possibly more historically consistent than differences between states.
The north Australian experience was strongly influenced by the massive influx of Asian labour. This influx continued beyond Federation until World War II, largely because the pearling industry, one of the economic mainstays of the far north, was exempted from the provision of the White Australia policy.' (Extract)
