Can’t think of a better day to take the ferry to Thursday Island. It takes about 75 minutes to get across to the administrative centre of the Torres Strait Islands. They used to have the hub back at Somerset on the mainland, but after they worked out the land was a dead loss and the locals were hostile, they moved the magistrate and the rest of the local administration to Thursday Island in the late 1800s. Aside from that, it’s was once a hub for the pearl diving industry long before they ever heard of the bends. That would account for the large number of graves of Japanese divers from that era.

Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful place.

View from Thursday Island

Thursday Island is just 3.5 square kilometres and has 3000 permanent residents. So there’s no chance you’ll do big mileage on your car. There are 274 islands in the Torres Strait, with some residents on just 14 them. The total population of the Torres Strait is about 5000.

We decided to walk our way around the small number of features on the small island. Up at Grass Hill there’s a fort that was created during WWII. No need to say why. There’s a wealth of information around the fort including an underground maze of rooms, formerly the magazine of ammunition, housing more information than you possibly read in a visit. But the views are good…

Thursday Island

And Harry had a close inspection of the canons.

Are you sure there’s nothing in there Harry?

We had lunch at the Top Pub, which is at the bottom of the street. That’s about all there is to see on Thursday Island. I reckon you’d go nuts here if you weren’t into fishing.

We’ve been really impressed with how clean and tidy the towns and communities have been so far, including Thursday Island. It’s a stark contrast to what we saw in the Territory and WA. And a pleasant surprise. But…..the east coast where we drove along the beach from Somerset was a disgusting pile of litter from fishing boats. There was an enormous array of plastic everything – small to large. If everyone who visited here just took one bag full of rubbish that has been washed up from the oceans, then we might get ahead. Heaven only knows how you deal with the fishermen.