Visit to Thursday and Horn Islands

There are a few ways to visit the Torres Strait Islands from this area.  There are helicopter flights over the islands and ferry trips with and without tours.  We opted to do a ferry trip with tours of Thursday and Horn Islands.  It would be a busy day for us.  We arrived at the Seisia wharf which was crowded with fisherpeople at 7.30am, ready to board the MV Torres Magic at 7.45am.

The ferry was full and took off on time at 8am for the 90 minute trip across the Endeavour Strait, past many islands and on to Thursday Island.  Prince of Wales Island is the 3rd biggest island in Queensland at 203sq kms and Possession Island is where Lieutenant James Cook planted the Union Jack and took possession of the east coast of Australia for King George III.

Thursday Island is one of the smaller islands in the Torres Strait and only 5.4sq kms.  It is the administrative centre and has a population of about 4000.  The main industries are tourism and crayfish.  Until the 1970s there was also a large pearl diving industry to harvest mother-of-pearl for making buttons.  This industry diminished from the 1950s when plastic replaced pearl shell for buttons.

Once on the island we boarded our bus for a 90 minute tour of the island.  We stopped off at Green Hill, which is the highest point on TI (as it's known to the locals).  During World War I this was a gunnery point with an underground bunker.  One gun was fired in 1915 on a ship which failed to identify itself - it soon signalled that it was friendly after a shot across the bows.  Early in the 1930s the site was decommissioned.







As well as the guns, the underground bunker houses a small museum with a lot of information about the pearl diving industry and a history of the Torres Strait Islanders' involvement in World War II, most notably in the Light Infantry.

We also stopped off at the Thursday Island Cemetery and our tour guide explained some of the burial rites on the islands.  Graves are covered with flowers immediately following a burial and a plain wooden cross may be erected.  This may be followed by building a roof over the gravesite for a time while the family arranges for a headstone and more permanent grave decoration.  This can take several years and many graves are very elaborate.



When the headstone arrives it is erected and and covered until the official Tombstone Opening.  This marks the end of the official mourning period.  We have seen several notices of Tombstone Openings as we've visited the various towns around Loyalty Beach.  There are many graves of divers from pearl diving days.

Thursday Island has plenty of infrastructure with a hospital, shops, cultural centre, schools and sporting venues.  All inhabited islands have a primary school and the only secondary school, to year 12 in the Torres Strait is on TI.  The one thing it doesn't have is a source of permanent fresh water.  Fresh water is piped from a reservoir on nearby Horn Island.

After our tour of TI we boarded a small ferry for the 15 minute ride to Horn Island.  This island is much larger than TI and it has an international airport with regular flights to Papua New Guinea and Cairns.  Horn Island was an army base during World War II and was bombed by the Japanese in 8 air raids in 1942 with 33 war deaths (14 of these were in an aircrash).

After lunch we had time to visit the small museum which had good informative displays about the Torres Strait and European cultures.  There were several displays illustrating myths and legends of the area which we found very interesting.

After the museum we were back on our bus for a tour of some of the World War II sites.  We saw a split trench, machine gun placement, ammunition bunker, strategy bunker and plot room.  Our final stop was the site of the previously mentioned aircrash where a B17 bomber crashed with the loss of 14 lives when it missed the runway on landing.

Then it was back on the small ferry for a quick trip back to TI and from there back to the mainland.  In all a very interesting day.  We arrived back in Seisia at 4pm.