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Today is Thursday and we are in Thursday Island! Locally it is known as “TI” and is the administrative and commercial center of the Torres Strait Islands. Thursday Island is the northernmost point of Australia and is very small with just 2,500 residents and an area of about 1.4 square miles. The highest point on the Island, Milman Hill, stands at 341 feet above sea level and was a World War II defense facility and the primary stop on of our tour today.
Click here for the detailed Photo Gallery.
This island was also nicknamed “Thirsty Island” since there wasn’t any water naturally occurring here. In fact, today, all of the water is captured in large reservoirs on nearby Howe Island and then piped underwater to TI.
During World War II, Thursday Island became the military headquarters for the Torres Strait and was a base for Australian and United States forces. In January 1942 they evacuated all of the civilians. There were a lot of Japanese living here working in pearl farming which was a major industry, and the Japanese on the island 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, due 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.
Many Japanese divers died working in the pearling industry in the early 1900’s since they used manual air pumps to breathe underwater and they didn’t yet know about “the bends”. So, they just died or had painful side effects when they stayed down too long or came up too fast. They mostly harvested oysters for the mother of pearl for buttons, silverware handles, etc. rather than for the pearls themselves.
Of the 2,500 people living on TI, over 1,000 work for the government, since this is the northern-most outpost for Australia and the gateway to Asia. So with the crayfish industry (that’s what they call lobsters here), the pearling industry (pretty small now) and government jobs, employment is high on the island and things are good.
We toured the hilltop fort, where we saw three large gun encampments (they could shoot around five miles) and underground bunker tunnels that they have turned into a maritime and military history museum. It was sweltering inside, a veritable sauna. When we went back to the bus we found that our tour guide was MIA and 30+ people were standing around sweating. Turns out our tour guide had to close up the museum which took about 10 minutes. We eventually got onto the bus only to find out the air conditioning was broken so the inside of the bus turned into another sauna. But, she had to give us the rest of the island tour anyway! So, we all lost a couple pounds and eventually made our way onto the tender and back on the Voyager.
One of the outstanding features of this very small island is that the waters surrounding, and most areas of northern Australia, have salt-water crocodiles! They told us absolutely no swimming (not a problem). When Dale and I were eating lunch we saw something splashing out in the water. It happened about 10 times during the course of lunch, and we have to believe that they were crocodiles jumping to catch fish. At times they would come 2-3 feet out of the water!
Photography Comments:
Another mostly cloudy and gray day and also hot and sticky. One of the issues with the hot, humid weather is when you go out for a sunrise picture the camera is quite cold in our air conditioned room. So, the lens clouds up immediately when you step outside. You need to leave the camera outside for at least five minutes and then use a lens cloth to wipe off the moisture. By then, the sunrise is many times over unless you got up early enough. This also happens throughout the day when we are on air conditioned tours. Just part of photography in the tropics.
Not much to take pictures of today, especially since we went onshore just before the tour and then had to depart immediately on the tender after our tour ended. I will get a couple pictures from Sherrie because she had a few more minutes onshore to get some good shots, especially of the northern-most pub in Australia! I just took the Canon S95 today.