Badu people are an

Indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

group of Torres Strait Island people based on the central-west

Badu island Badu or Badu Island (; mwp, Badhu, ; also Mulgrave Island), is an island in the Torres Strait north of Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia. Badu Island is also a locality in the Torres Strait Island Region, and Wakaid is the only town, loc ...

Language

The language traditionally spoken by the Badu people and their Mabuiag neighbours is

Kala Lagaw Ya ''Kalau Lagau Ya'', ''Kalaw Lagaw Ya'', ''Kala Lagaw Ya'' (), or the ''Western Torres Strait language'' (also several other names, see below), is the language indigenous to the central and western Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia. O ...

, a member of the Pama-Nyungan language family.

Ecology

Badu, together with

Moa Island Moa Island, also called Banks Island, is an island of the Torres Strait Islands archipelago that is located north of Thursday Island in the Banks Channel of Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. It is also a locality within the Torres Strait ...

to its West from which it is separated by a narrow channel, is one of the largest in the Torres Strait. Circular in form, roughly 6 kilometres in diameter it is surrounded by complex tides that can run up to 7 knots. Generally sparsely wooded, and rocky, the northern part of the island is fringed with dense mangroves.

Headhunting

Badu Island in particular, with the publication of

Ion Idriess Ion Llewellyn Idriess (20 September 18896 June 1979) was a prolific and influential Australian author. He wrote more than 50 books over 43 years between 1927 and 1969 – an average of one book every 10 months, and twice published three books i ...

's novel '' The Wild White Man of Badu'' (1950), gained a reputation as an island of headhunters, though the practice was widespread throughout the Torres Strait. Taking the head of one's enemy was a ritual practice, involving a cane hoop and a special bamboo knife (''upi'') for severing the head, then boiling it and dressing it with beeswax noses and eyes fashioned from

nautilus The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in t ...

nacre Nacre ( , ), also known as mother of pearl, is an organicinorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer; it is also the material of which pearls are composed. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent. Nacre is f ...

History

Willem Janszoon Willem Janszoon (; ), sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz., was a Dutch navigator and colonial governor. Janszoon served in the Dutch East Indies in the periods 16031611 and 16121616, including as governor of Fort Henricus on the island of So ...

in the ''Duyfken'' as early as 1605 sailed close to the island of Badu while en route back to the East Indies after a reconnaissance of New Guinea for the Dutch East India Company. The impression left of the region was of a waste land populated by cruel savages. The island itself, together with Mabuiagm was later charted by

William Bligh Vice-Admiral William Bligh (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. The mutiny on the HMS ''Bounty'' occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command; after being set adrift i ...

. Badu islanders murdered three Europeans from the ''Thomas Lord'' which had anchored off the island while searching for trepang in June 1846.

Notes and references

Citations

References

* * * * * * * {{Aboriginal peoples of Queensland Torres Strait Islanders