aborigines are quite categorical in their statements that the Macassarese were preceded another people they term the Baijini. These people were different from the later Macassarese, though like the Macassarese, they came for the purpose of collecting trepang, a sea-slug which abounds in the shallow waters off the Arnhem Land coast.. The Baijini had an advanced technology: they possessed hand-looms, were agriculturalists, and built huts during their stays in Australia. One of the more interesting comments made about the Baijini is a reference to their light-coloured skins. Whilst it is possible that these people may have been Chinese, the trade in trepang was usually carried out by non-Chinese, the Chinese middlemen coming into the picture at Koepang and other such markets. Fitzgerald suggests that any Chinese voyages would most likely have been scientific and exploratory expeditions rather than trading expeditions. The Baijini, then, may have been another Indonesian people, and not necessarily Chinese.' J.V.G. Mills, in a note to a translation of a Ming dynasty account by Ma Huan concerning Chinese voyages at that time, suggested that if, of the many Asian people whose visits might have engendered a legend about the Baijini, they were Chinese, the likely explanation would be that it referred to some vessel detached from the fleet of Zheng He, which would have sailed south from Timor. Modern theories Anthropologist Ian McIntosh has interpreted the cycle's mention of the Baijini as a fictional history devised by the Yolngu, centered on Warramiri clanland at Dholtji in the Cape Wilberforce peninsula. According to this theory, the function of the Baijini stories was to provide a mythic charter to govern trade relations, originally, with Asians. McIntosh argues that Birrinydji, in his twin roles as a powerful sea-captain and blacksmith in the Dreamtime, was the key figure in legends that encode the problems arising from primal encounters with outsiders. It was he who is said to have drawn by his magnetic presence and actions far-flung peoples to migrate to Arnhem Land's coasts. The name 'Birronydji' itself appears to reflect a term for freebooting Portuguese crusaders. This Birrinydji was said to have the power to morph at will from being white to black. His people wore sarongs, distinctive whale-tail shaped hats and their craft flew a flag banded with blue, red and blue stripes. These features are correlated by McIntosh with a Macassan story that narrates how a group of Gowans