16th June 2026: left the Jardine Motel and went on the 9.30am Peddell’s Thursday Island tour. We visited the cemetery to see the graves of the at least 600 to 700 Japanese Pearl divers.who dived between 1878 and 1941, mainly dying from the bends. We saw the grave of Bernard Namok who designed the Torres Strait’s flag. We saw the Wongai tree, with berries used in herbal medicines. We then headed up Grass Hill, where a power outage meant that we were unable to visit the museum, however Christine our bus driver and guide told us many interesting things about TI. We then caught a Time and Tide ferry over to Horn Island. We walked to our Wongai Beach Hotel where we rested for a while then headed for the Museum as a preliminary to tomorrow and history tour with Vanessa and Liberty Seekee. It was a fascinating museum about WW 2 on Horn Island and the role of the principally Islander Light Infantry division -810 volunteers out of total population of 3000..
We ate at the hotel and met some of the aviation rescue staff based on Horn Island, the only Torres Straight Island with an airstrip.
FUN FACT (a bit windy?): Thursday Island and the rest of the Torres Strait region are substantially less prone to cyclones than mainland Queensland. TI is about 10 degrees South of the equator, so the coriolis force needed to spin and form cyclonic systems is much less. Second, any cyclone forming further South has to pass through a narrow passage to hit TI and the other islands. Third, the nearby land masses of Cape York and PNG act to break the severity of nearby cyclones.
ReplyDeleteTI has experienced cyclones over the years, some of which have inflicted substantial damage. But they have been predominantly Category 2 and 3, certainly not the Category 5 monsters that have periodically assailed the QLD mainland.
cb - just a bit. Nicely positioned.
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