Shortlisted for this year’s Stella Prize for Women’s Writing was Santilla Chingaipe’s Black Convicts, which brings to light the fact convicts of African ancestry were transported to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788 and thereafter. Chingaipe makes mention of racial diversity amongst convicts, but her focus is on Africans. It so happens I have been immersed in research about another convict of colour, an Indian named Sheik Brom, and in piecing together his particular story I learnt he was not the only Indian lawbreaker shipped to the antipodean colonies.
Brom came into my awareness when I discovered he was engaged as a cook by the famed Australian explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell, circa 1843. He will feature in a book I am working on about celebrity cooks in colonial Australia — and will not be the only Indian cook in it — a project that requires years of work yet. Still, I thought it timely to share some of what I know of Brom.
Biographical details on Brom are scant. He was born in Surat in 1802, a Muslim, 5ft 2inches in height and “dark skinned”. His carrying a surname of Dutch origin might be accounted for by the presence of the Dutch East India Company in Surat. His journey to Mitchell’s employ in Sydney from western India was circuitous.
In 1824, Brom was indicted and charged with theft in London. He must have made his way to England by sea — the only, and improbable, alternative being a 7000-kilometre walk or horse ride – likely working his passage as a lascar, seamen recruited by British ship operators to do the hard work of sailing a vessel. Lascars were poorly paid and more often poorly treated. It was not unusual for their maritime employer to abandon them in London when a ship docked; others voluntarily deserted to take their chances in the Metropole. Either way, lascars without resources and limited English found it hard to find employment, forcing some to commit crimes to survive. Perhaps this was Sheik Brom’s situation.
The property Brom filched in London was worth 101 shillings, an amount for which the law demanded he be sentenced to death. Nevertheless, the hearing judge thought him an “unfortunate Black” “unaccustomed to mess with Europeans” and commuted this sentence to transportation to the ends of the earth, New South Wales. In April 1826, Brom disembarked the Asia, at Sydney, where he was likely assigned — all convicts were put to work — to domestic service in a private home, as Indians were considered to be ‘good’ servants, i.e., trainable and obedient. It didn’t take long before Brom showed himself to be not so biddable. Six months in, he stole a cornucopia of goods from a city residence. He was caught, convicted and shipped north to the remote penal colony at Moreton Bay, a notoriously brutal place from which he quickly escaped, then returned himself.
This pattern of flight and return was a regular occurrence with convicts. While eager to flee penal servitude, once in unfamiliar bushland they lacked the knowledge to feed themselves from native food sources, and/or were terrified of Aboriginal people. In 1830, Brom bolted again and made his way 300 kilometres south, on foot, to the untamed Northern Rivers region, remaining here for several years — making him one of the first non-Aboriginal people to see this area. He could not have stayed there for so long without the support, or at least the toleration, of First Nations people to have stayed out for as long as he did. Other fugitives passing through reported Brom provided hospitality to them.
It seemed Brom was counting his days out in the wilderness because he eventually handed himself in at Port Macquarie in the belief he had served his sentence out there. Discovering this was not the case, he escaped again, hitching a ride on a south bound steamer. He told the captain he was Jose Koondiana, a sailor from Daman, who had walked across the continent after being shipwrecked on the west Australian coast. This fabulous story hoodwinked the captain and made it into the Sydney Herald. Brom was soon identified though and returned to Moreton Bay, attempting another escape in the company of a fellow Indian convict, George Brown.
In 1842 Sheik Brom was granted his ticket of leave, allowing him to seek private employment. In October 1843, Sir Thomas Mitchell, residing in Sydney, makes a note in his journal about him, in particular his interactions with First Nations people. Three weeks later he writes that Brom has agreed to come as a cook at a salary of fifteen pounds a year. After that he disappears from the record until his death in Queensland in 1847.
There is so much more to this story about Sheik Brom, Indian convicts and the influence of India in the early colonies. In the meantime, this is just a tantalising taste.
SEE ALSO: Lakshmi Ganapathy’s LINKING HISTORY Ep 2: Indian indentured labour in Australia
