15th June 2026: up early to move our Prado and caravan to the guest car park and meet our driver at 6.45am. He was a member of staff at Punsand Bay - a Chilean who had been working there for 4 days! However he drove the roads well to Seisia to drop us off at the ferry to Thursday Island, a trip that took about an hour on calm aquamarine waters!
We decided on a coffee and croissant and met a nice couple Ellen & John from Brampton Beach visiting their son John and his wife Eliana who live on TI with their 2 boys. John told us about an historical tour run on Horn Is called “In their footsteps” run by Vanessa Seekee , which we will do.
We dropped our packs at the Jardine Motel and then went the Gab Titui Cultural Centre to learn something of TI culture and history. There was an exhibition of photographs by a Japanese geographer and anthropologist Professor George Ohshima 50 years ago when his team did an extensive cultural and geographical survey of the all of Torres Strait Islands.
We then walked up Green Hill for a great view of the town and to see 3 canons present since the late 19th century, but never actually used. The museum there looked like it was permanently closed.
We had walked around many of the streets and came to an Office of Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade and went in. There we met the Head of Mission, who told us his job was to work out any issues concerning the Treaty between PNG and Australia regarding the Torres Straight Islands. He had just one other locally engaged staff member to assist him.
We returned to our coffee shop MA.KAi for a lunch of chicken and avocado pie (Nic ) and vegetable crustless pie(me).
We rested for a while in our motel room then walked along the rest of the foreshore to the hospital where we spoke to a couple of nurses - both FIFO- one from Melbourne and one from New Zealand. The cost of these staffing arrangements must be very high.
We had dinner at the Torres Hotel (The top hotel in Australia)- Coral trout with chips and salad.
FUN FACT (Geo-strategically serious): During negotiations leading to PNG independence, PM Gough Whitlam, most likely in his bombastic ‘Comrades I know what must be done’ style, proposed that Australia’s border with PNG was ‘a colonial relic’. As a gesture of ‘goodwill’ to PNG it should be moved awaythe from close to the PNG mainland and further south to 10th parallel.
ReplyDeleteGough’s proposal would have bisected the political geography of the Torres Strait. Eight of the seventeen permanently inhabited islands are north of the 10th parallel; three (Saigai, Boigu and Dauan) are just four, six and 12 kilometres respectively from the PNG mainland.
There were howls of protest from QLD Premier Joh Bjelke Peterson, and even more vociferously from Torres Strait islanders. The islanders protested they had one cultural identity across all islands in the Strait and said in no uncertain terms that they wanted all the islands to remain Australian.
Negotiations stretched out and beyond Gough’s Dismissal, and the treaty, with all islands remaining Australian, was signed in 1978 by Gough’s successor, the taciturn Malcolm Fraser, and PNG PM Michael Somare. It was ratified in 1985.
One might say Australia has at least as much potential to control the Torres Strait, which links the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as Iran has with the Strait of Hormuz. There are around 250 to 300 commercial shipping movements through the strait each month. That said the Straits are shallow and require pilots to guide them through. Very large ships, with drafts greater than 12.2 metres, cannot sail through the strait. In any case, almost all ships sailing through the strait are going to and from Australia.
The geostrategic significance of the strait is more tied up with defence imperatives, and border force activities. There are also hundreds of Commonwealth public servants providing welfare and other public service staff on TI working for various agencies, the most prominent of which is the Torres Strait Regional Authority. There is also one from DFAT plus a locally engaged staff charged with administering the border treaty.
cb - De Quiros 1606 sailed west from Peru, commanded 4 ships, one captained by Luis de Torres. Torres through to Manila, Quiros had turned back at New Hebrides. Torres reported “large islands” but probably saw the Cape. Named the area “Austrialia (sic) del Espirito Santo”, a nod to Phillip III of Spain who was also Prince of Austria.
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