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A group of volunteers helping improve a hospital in remote Vanuatu have discovered an unsettling link to Australia's cane-farming history.
Five volunteers from Bundaberg West Rotary in Queensland recently travelled to Lolowai, Ambae Island, where they helped refurbish the Godden Memorial Hospital, which services about 35,000 people from three different islands.
Club president Phil Saxby said while working on the project, they discovered an unexpected connection with their home town.
"The Bundaberg connection relates to a kanaka who was in Bundaberg, and was maltreated in Bundaberg," he said.
"When he returned to Vanuatu, because of what happened in Bundaberg, he was determined to kill the first white person he ran across.
"He returned to his village, his local villagers talked him out of killing the person who was resident in the village because he had been there for a number of years and was very helpful to the village.
"Instead he turned his attention to the priest who turned up later to baptise some kids."
That priest was Charles Godden, who died in 1906. The hospital was named in his memory.
"Father Godden was aware of the risk, but still went to perform his duties of baptism, and was knifed and murdered by the returned kanaka from Bundaberg," Mr Saxby said.
Between 1863 and 1904 about 62,000 people, some as young as 12, were brought to Queensland to work on farms, often in poor conditions.
Many died and were buried on the farms they worked on, such as Sunnyside in Bundaberg, which has 29 heritage-listed graves on the property.
Others were deported under the White Australia policy, and some chose to return their country once the practice ended.
Their descendants are known as Australian South Sea Islanders, and trace their heritage to 80 Pacific islands but primarily Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
Mr Saxby said uncovering this part of the sugar industry's troubling past made the trip to assist the people of Vanuatu more poignant for the volunteers.
"In the village we were in, some of them have relatives living still in Bundaberg," he said.
"It wasn't just enforced blackbirding, there were free settlers who came, some of them who actually returned to Vanuatu, subsequently decided living in Australia was better and emigrated back here to Bundaberg.
Australian South Sea Islanders were recognised as a distinct cultural group in Queensland in 2000, though many are still fighting for more to be done to address the disadvantage many face.
Mr Saxby said the link made the work the Rotarians would continue to do on building a better health care system for the village even more important.
"It's a large project, following on from that there is staff training that needs to be undertaken, there's equipment that needs to be utilised in the hospital — it will be an ongoing project," he said.
"I'm an orthodontist, Dr John Joiner went, he's an anaesthetist, none of our skills could be utilised in that hospital, the facilities aren't there.
"The theatre facility is not operational, the highest level of analgesic the local doctor has access to is straight paracetamol."
He said it could take four to five years to bring some of the buildings up to scratch, but the group was committed to continue the work.
"I think all of us have some contribution to make to our fellow humans, that's part of the reason most Rotarians are in Rotary," he said.
"We like to give back to our local community but there is a broad world community as well.
"This one has got a very close touch to Bundaberg."