Torres Strait welcomes tourists to its untouched land and waters
New opportunities, local jobs and cultural awareness is hoped to flow into the Torres Strait following a first of its kind tourism offering unveiled over the weekend.
Cairns
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Far North businesses are counting on new opportunities, local jobs and cultural awareness to flow into the Torres Strait following a first-of-its-kind tourism offering unveiled over the weekend.
Sonia Einersen, manager of Torres Strait Tours, has been connecting people to the islands for years with their seven-days-a-week boats and ferries, and said the new packages from Strait Experiences would be “awesome for the area.”
“It will bring new people in and have different opportunities for local employment and cultural awareness,” she said.
Ms Einersen said there had been a lack of tourists visiting the islands, with only a few Bamaga locals visiting during the Covid period and occasional international visitors there for non-tourist related purposes.
“(Torres Strait) is a little, unknown area,” she said
“The most common question we get is if people need a passport to come, they don’t realise it’s a part of Queensland.”
The region boasts its “unique water colour” as Ms Einersen recalled the astonishment on the faces of first-timers travelling to the area.
“They say ‘oh my God it’s so beautiful,’” she said.
“There’s nothing like it in all of Australia.”
Ms Einersen, who operates out of Thursday Island and Horn Island, said the region was eager to welcome tourists to its islands and untouched lands and and hoped there would be more development as tourism builds.
“Most people up here are very keen for people to understand their culture and where they come from,” she said.
“Strait Experience is a step in the right direction, they have some wonderful plans.”
Strait Experience will bring small group tours to Horn Island and Thursday Island once a month, taking tourists from Cairns to the Strait and back in a single day for $1399.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland CEO Mark Olsen, said the Torres Strait is one of the absolute jewels of the Pacific with no other place like it.
“It’s one of the last groups of islands that has yet to be touched by the kind of modern tourism that we see in other parts of the world,” he said.
“Many people have probably thought about it, but they haven’t been able to make it work to actually get there, but now they can go up and back in a single day.”
Mr Olsen said he hoped to have additional tours to the incredible region as the offerings expand to some day include outlying islands.
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