Gold lipped pearl shell: : Torres Strait Islands

Date1917 - 1933

Object number00018247

NamePearl shell

MediumMollusc bivalve shell

Dimensions35 x 192 x 195 mm, 0.45 kg

ClassificationsAnimals and animal products

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Philip MacFarlane

Terms

DescriptionGold lipped pearl shell collected from Torres Strait, Australia. HistoryThe Reverend William MacFarlane was an Anglican missionary who, with his wife Gwen MacFarlane, worked in the Torres Strait Islands from 1917 until 1933, mainly at the Erub (Darnley) Island Mission. During his service he kept detailed diaries and notes on the work of the Mission as well as on the culture of the Islanders, their legends and history, which included many references to individual Islanders and families. The MacFarlanes wrote and broadcast about their experiences and Torres Strait Island culture in a series of magazine articles and on ABC radio, until Reverend MacFarlane's death in 1963. While at the Mission, Reverend MacFarland contributed notes and photographs to Dr A. C. Haddon, which were incorporated in the ethnography volume of the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Cambridge, 1935. Gwen MacFarlane's memoirs, ‘Smoke, sand and sail: a home with "the happy people"', written some years after leaving Torres Strait, are held as an unpublished manuscript in the AIAS Library.SignificanceThis pearl shell was collected by the Reverend and Mrs MacFarlane whilst serving as missionaries on Erub (Darnley) Island in Tores Strait from 1917 - 1933.