Deserters – maritime workers who left their ships before the end of their contracts – make up the biggest group of ‘coloured immigrants’ who were known to have entered Australia without authorisation during the era of the White Australia Policy. Archival records show that some deserters sought to stay in Australia, while others soon left again as workers on different ships. Both of these forms of labour mobility went against Australian and global structures, including immigration and employment law, that regulated the mobility of non-white maritime workers. Immigration restriction and racially-specific employment contracts were interconnected; they worked together to facilitate and restrict Asian workers’ movements along circumscribed channels. Despite this, the records of desertion show traces of people who were able to enact forms of autonomous mobility.