Thursday Island, colloquially known as TI, or in the Kawrareg dialect, Waiben or Waibene, is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

of the

Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total la ...

, an

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arch ...

of at least 274 small islands in the

Torres Strait The Torres Strait (), also known as Zenadh Kes, is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost extremity of the Australian mai ...

. TI is located approximately north of

Cape York Peninsula Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth’s last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación ...

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stretches north to the Torres Strait, and west to the Gulf Co ...

, Australia. Thursday Island is also the name of the town in the south and west of the island and also the name of the

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...

which contains the island within the Shire of Torres. The town of Rose Hill (known as Abednego until 7 September 1991) is located on the north-eastern tip of the island (). In the , Thursday Island had a population of 2,938 people.

Geography

Thursday Island has an area of about . The highest point on Thursday Island, standing at

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

, is Milman Hill, a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

defence facility. While Thursday Island is within the Shire of Torres and is the administrative centre for that shire, it is also the administrative and commercial centre of the local government area of Torres Strait Island Region despite not being part of that local government area.

History

Pearling luggers at Thursday Island, 1939

The island has been populated for thousands of years by the

Torres Strait Islanders Torres Strait Islanders () are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often groupe ...

, though archeological evidence on Badu, further north in Torres Strait, suggests that the area has been inhabited from before the end of the last Ice Age. The archaeology from Badu, Pulu, Saibai and Mer shows that Melanesian occupation started around 2,600 years ago (see Kalaw Lagaw Ya). In 1848 a hydrographic survey of the area was conducted by Captain Owen Stanley of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...

, the commander of HMS ''Rattlesnake''. He named this island Friday Island and another island Thursday Island (presumably reflecting the day of the week on which he named them). However, in June 1855 Admiral Sir

Francis Beaufort Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (; 27 May 1774 – 17 December 1857) was an Irish hydrographer, rear admiral of the Royal Navy, and creator of the Beaufort cipher and the Beaufort scale. Early life Francis Beaufort was descende ...

of the Royal Navy (the Admiralty Hydrographer) decided to switch the names around so the present-day Thursday Island would appear on the left of present-day Friday Island on a map. The original place of permanent European settlement in Torres Strait was

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lor ...

, south-east of the tip of

, established in 1864. However, the channel between

Albany Island Albany Island or Pabaju is an island off the north-eastern coast of Cape York Peninsula in the Adolphus Channel and part of the Manar Group of islands of Queensland, Australia. It is within the locality of Somerset in the Shire of Torres. ...

and Somerset proved to be hazardous for a port and in 1875 it was jointly decided by the Queensland and British governments to transfer the port to the deep anchorage on the south side of Thursday Island. The new port was called Port Kennedy, after Edmund Kennedy, the explorer of Cape York Peninsula, and was established in 1867. The town that developed on the island was also called Port Kennedy, but on 1 June 1962 the town was renamed Thursday Island. In 1877, an administrative centre for the Torres Strait Islands was set up on the island by the

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the democratic administrative authority of the Australian state of Queensland. The Government of Queensland, a parliamentary constitutional monarchy was formed in 1859 as prescribed in its Constitution, as amended f ...

and by 1883 over 200 pearling vessels were based on the island.

Pearl trade

A lucrative pearling industry was founded on the island in 1884, attracting workers from around

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, including

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, Malaya and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, seeking their fortune. The Japanese community was in part indentured divers and boat hands who returned to Japan after a period of service and some longer term residents who were active in boat building and in the ownership of luggers for hire—which was illegal but bypassed by leases through third parties back to other Japanese, a practice called "dummying". Additionally, many south Pacific Islanders worked in the industry, with some originally imported against their will, in a practice known as

blackbirding Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The term has been most commonly applied to the large-scale taking of people in ...

. While the pearling industry has declined in importance, the mix of cultures is evident to this day. The pearling industry centred on the harvesting of pearl shell, which was used mainly to make shirt buttons. The local pearl oyster is Golden Lip Oyster, '' Pinctada maxima''.

Shell trade

Trochus shell was also gathered using specialized boats. Most shell was exported as the raw material—to a London-based market. Pearls themselves were rare and a bonus for the owner or crew. The boats used were very graceful two-masted

lugger A lugger is a sailing vessel defined by its rig, using the lug sail on all of its one or several masts. They were widely used as working craft, particularly off the coasts of France, England, Ireland and Scotland. Luggers varied extensively ...

s. In shallow water free diving was used while in deeper water diver's dress, or an abbreviated form of it, with a surface air supply was used. In good times there were three divers to a lugger, a stern diver, one midships, and one diver off the bow. A manual air compressor was used. It looked like a yard-wide cube with two large wheels mounted one on each side. For part of the fleet that operated further from Thursday Island, larger vessels, typically

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

s were used as mother ships to the luggers. Shell was usually opened on the mother vessels rather than on the luggers, in order to secure any pearls found. The waters of the Straits are murky and visibility was generally very poor. Even though dive depths were not great, except at the Darnley Deep (near Darnley or Erub Island), which was 40 fathoms (240 feet), attacks of the bends were common and deaths frequent.

Telegraph, trade, and cyclone

The Thursday Island Parish of the

Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns is a diocese of the Catholic Church located in the state of Queensland, Australia. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The diocese was erected as a vicariate apostolic in 1877 and ...

(now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns) was established in 1884. On 25 August 1887, The

Paterson (Cape York) Telegraph Station The Paterson Telegraph Station (later known as The Cape York Telegraph Station) was a telegraph station in Queensland, Australia. It was the original location for the end of the Cape York Telegraph Line. It was the landing point for the under ...

on the West Coast of Cape York was opened. It connected the Cape York Telegraph Line with Thursday Island, via an undersea cable. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries Thursday Island was a regular stop for vessels trading between the east coast of Australia and

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

. A shipping disaster to a vessel in this service occurred in 1890 when struck an uncharted reef in the Strait and sank in five minutes with the loss of over 130 lives. The Anglican Church on Thursday Island built shortly afterwards was named the Quetta All Souls Memorial Cathedral in memory of the event.Foley, J C H, 1982: Timeless Isle. Torres Strait Historical Society, Thursday Island. Today the church is called All Souls and St Bartholomew Church.

Cyclone Mahina Cyclone Mahina was the deadliest cyclone in recorded Australian history, and also likely the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, on 4 March 1899, ...

, which hit Bathurst Bay, southeast of Thursday Island in 1899, wrecked the pearling fleet sheltering there, with huge losses of vessels and lives.

Fort

The fear of Russian invasion as a result of the deterioration of relations between the Russian Empire and the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

led to a fort on Battery Point being built in 1892 to protect the island. The fort has not been in operation since 1927, but is today a heritage feature of the island.

Twentieth century

Local pearling declined steadily up to

, partly through competition from a Japanese-based fleet which did not use local resources or personnel. In the 1950s plastic buttons imitating pearl supplanted much of the demand for shell. Before the decline, pearl fishing was taken by the island-based fleet to the

Aru Islands The Aru Islands Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru) is a group of about 95 low-lying islands in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It also forms a regency of Maluku Province, with a land area of . At the 2011 Census the Regency had a ...

in what was then the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, whic ...

. The Thursday Island Customs House opened in 1938 at 2 Victoria Parade (). During

, Thursday Island became the military headquarters for the Torres Strait and was a base for Australian and

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

forces. January 1942 saw the evacuation of civilians from the island. Residents of Japanese origin or descent were interned. The residents did not return until after the end of the war and many ethnic Japanese were forcibly repatriated. The island was spared from bombing in World War II, due, it was thought, to it being the burial place of many Japanese pearl shell divers, or possibly the Japanese thinking there were still Japanese residents on the island. However, neighboring Horn Island was extensively bombed. There was an airbase there, used by the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

to attack parts of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...

. At the end of the war, the island tradition of a no-footwear policy was reinstated out of respect for the ancient spirits believed to reside on the island. After the war, an airline service was set up by

Ansett Airlines Ansett Australia was a major Australian airline group, based in Melbourne, Australia. The airline flew domestically within Australia and from the 1990s to destinations in Asia. After operating for 65 years, the airline was placed into admini ...

from

Cairns Cairns (, ) is a city in Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. The population in June 2019 was 153,952, having grown on average 1.02% annually over the preceding five years. The city is the 5th-most-p ...

to TI twice a week, using de Havilland Dragon Rapides and later DC3s. Passengers disembarked on Horn Island and caught a ferry-boat over to TI, as they still do. The island was also served by a ship, the ''Elsana'', which made the journey once a month. For a short period after the war Okinawan divers were used on the luggers but this was not a great success. In the 1950s, the

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...

attempted to establish

cultured pearl Cultured pearls are formed within a cultured pearl sac with human intervention in the interior of productive living molluscs in a variety of conditions depending upon the mollusc and the goals. Just as the same as natural pearls, cultured pearls ...

farms, but many were devastated by disease in the 1970s. The trigger is considered by some to be the use of

dispersant A dispersant or a dispersing agent is a substance, typically a surfactant, that is added to a suspension of solid or liquid particles in a liquid (such as a colloid or emulsion) to improve the separation of the particles and to prevent their sett ...

s on the 1970 oil spill from the tanker ''Oceanic Grandeur''. This industry still exists around the island today. In the 1970s, there was also an attempt to farm green turtles. The Melanesian background of the Thursday Islanders became an issue in the 1970s, when

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

sought to include some of the Torres Strait Islands within its borders. The Torres Strait Islanders insisted that they were Australians, however, and after considerable diplomatic discussion and political disputation between the Queensland and the Federal Governments, all of the Torres Strait islands, including Thursday Island, remained part of Australia. From 1900 to 1996 the Quetta Memorial Church on the island was the cathedral church of the large Diocese of Carpentaria which included North Queensland, the Islands of the Torres Strait and, to 1968, Northern Territory.

Twenty-first century

At the , Thursday Island had a population of 2,610. Thursday-island-our-lady-of-the-sacred-heart-church

Heritage listings

Thursday Island has a number of

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many i ...

sites, including: * Chester Street:

Green Hill Fort Green Hill Fort is a heritage-listed fortification at Chester Street, Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, Queensland, Australia. The fort is important in Australian military history as a strategic coastal defence installation in the period o ...

*Douglas Street: Quetta Memorial Precinct * 120 Douglas Street: Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church * Summers Street: Thursday Island Cemetery (incorporating the Japanese Cemetery & the Grave of the Hon. John Douglas) * 2 Victoria Parade: Thursday Island Customs House The Gab Titui Cultural Centre (2004) on Thursday Island showcases both heritage and contemporary Islander artworks.

Economy

The Island is one of the two bases for the Torres Straits Pilots, a cooperative owned and run by qualified Master Mariners who pilot ships through the Straits and down to Cairns. This is a necessary service because navigation through the area is tricky due to the extensive reef systems. The island has the area hospital and courts, is the regional centre for higher education, a centre for some research organisations and is the administrative base for the local, state and federal governments. Banking and phones are available. Thursday Island is only in part self-sufficient for water, some being piped from the adjacent island. It has two wind turbines which generate some of its electricity requirement. The economy of the island is dependent on its role as an administrative centre and is supported by pearling and fishing, as well as a fast-developing tourism industry, with perhaps the most famous tourists being novelist Somerset Maugham and Banjo Paterson, and the most numerous being day-trippers from the cruise ships that call into the island each year.

Climate

Thursday Island has a

tropical savanna climate Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate is a tropical climate sub-type that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification categories ''Aw'' (for a dry winter) and ''As'' (for a dry summer). The driest month has less than of ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

: ''Aw'') with hot daytime temperatures and warm nighttime temperatures year round. The wet season typically runs from December through mid-May though occasionally rainfall occurs during the dry season.

Language

Torres Strait Creole is the dominant language spoken on Thursday Island by the Islanders, followed by Kalaw Lagaw Ya, commonly called Mabuiag (pronounced Mobyag) by many, although

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

is also spoken. The indigenous language is Kaiwaligau Ya, another dialect of Kalaw Lagaw Ya, otherwise known as Kowrareg, (or more correctly Kauraraigau Ya, the name used by the people in the mid to late 1800s).

Amenities

Thursday Island has number of services open to the community, including a sporting complex, gym, public library as well as ANZAC park and Ken Brown Oval. There is a community pharmacy, general store, butcher, bank and many other essential services. The Shire of Torres operates Ngulaig Meta Municipal

public library A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also civil servants. There are five fundamen ...

at 121 Douglas Street. The current library facility opened in 2015. Sacred Heart Catholic Church is in Douglas Street. It is within the Thursday Island Parish of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns.

Education

Tagai State College is a government primary and secondary (Early Childhood-12) school for boys and girls that operates 17 campuses throughout the Torres Strait, including two on Thursday Island. The Thursday Island primary school campus (Early Childhood-6) is at 31 Hargrave Street (). The Thursday Island secondary school campus (7-12) is at 21 Aplin Road () In 2017, the school across all location had a total enrolment of 1,554 students with 168 teachers (165 full-time equivalent) and 198 non-teaching staff (142 full-time equivalent). The school includes a

special education Special education (known as special-needs education, aided education, exceptional education, alternative provision, exceptional student education, special ed., SDC, or SPED) is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates th ...

program at Summers Street (). Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School is a Catholic primary (Prep-6) school for boys and girls at Normanby Street (). In 2017, the school had an enrolment of 103 students with 12 teachers (9 full-time equivalent) and 13 non-teaching staff (9 full-time equivalent). The Torres Strait Campus of the Tropical North Queensland

TAFE Technical and further education or simply TAFE (), is the common name in English-speaking countries in Oceania for vocational education, as a subset of tertiary education. TAFE institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational cours ...

Institute is located on the island next to the Tagai State College.

Notable people

Notable people who are from or who have lived on Thursday Island include: *

Charles Klapow Charles "Chucky" Klapow (born July 5, 1980) is an American choreographer and dance instructor who has performed and choreographed for various performers and several television and stage productions. He is also known for his teachings on the ment ...

(Choreographer) * Henry Gibson "Seaman" Dan, award-winning Torres Strait Islander musician. * John Douglas,

Premier of Queensland The premier of Queensland is the head of government in the Australian state of Queensland. By convention the premier is the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority in the unicameral Legislative Assembly of Queensland. The premier is ap ...

(1877–79) and Government Resident on Thursday Island (1885-1904). * Matthew Elliott, Australian professional rugby league football coach and former player * Tiarna Ernst, professional AFLW and Western Bulldogs Premiership Player. * Tommy Fujii, mother-of-pearl shell diver as a boy, later businessman * The Mills Sisters, a group of three musical sisters,

Rita Rita may refer to: People * Rita (given name) * Rita (Indian singer) (born 1984) * Rita (Israeli singer) (born 1962) * Rita (Japanese singer) * Eliza Humphreys (1850–1938), wrote under the pseudonym Rita Places * Djarrit, also known as R ...

and twins Cessa and Ina, who performed all over the Pacific and in Europe between the 1950 and late 1990s. *

Danny Morseu Danny Morseu (born 1 January 1958) is an Australian basketball player who played on the Australian national basketball team in the 1980 Summer Olympics and 1984 Summer Olympics. International career Morseu played for the Australian team at th ...

, professional basketball player * Peter Ware, WAFL premiership winning footballer with

Swan Districts The Swan Districts Football Club, nicknamed the Swans, is an Australian rules football club playing in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). The club is based at Bassendean Oval, in Bassendean, an eastern suburb ...

. * Jesse Williams, born on Thursday Island in 1990, the first

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 ...

to receive a scholarship to play

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

for the

Alabama Crimson Tide The Alabama Crimson Tide refers to the intercollegiate athletic varsity teams that represent the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I as a me ...

. * Ethel May Eliza Zahel (1877–1951), teacher and public servant. *Bernard Namok, designer of the

Torres Strait Islander flag The Torres Strait Islander Flag is an official flag of Australia, and is the flag that represents Torres Strait Islander people. It was designed in 1992 by Bernard Namok. It won a local competition held by the Islands Coordinating Council, and ...

. *

Elma Gada Kris Elma Gada Kris is an Australian dancer, choreographer and NAIDOC award winner. She is a Torres Strait Islander woman of the Wagadagam, Kaurareg, Sipingur, Gebbara and Kai Dangal Buai peoples, and a member of the Bangarra Dance Theatre. Early lif ...

, dancer, choreographer, actor, NAIDOC award winner (2019) artist of the year.

References

External links

Island (Waiben) Thursday Island (Waiben)

Glover's 1879 watercolour of Thursday Island
*
Town map of Thursday Island, 1982
{{Authority control Torres Strait Islands Towns in Queensland Torres Strait Islands communities Islands of Far North Queensland Aboriginal communities in Queensland Queensland in World War II Populated places in Far North Queensland Shire of Torres Localities in Queensland