Torres Strait Islands: under-the-radar archipelago that’s right on our doorstep
Blessed with coral reefs, deserted beaches and an intriguing history, the Torres Strait Islands are one of the most underrated places in the world.
Makan time!” Perina Drummond grins as she dishes up lunch on the deck of my Waiben (Thursday Island) apartment. “Let’s eat!” Her salad of cray tails, quinoa and pumpkin is the perfect match, with chilled beers, for the Coral Sea views and balmy ocean breezes.
“One thing I love about here,” Drummond says of the Torres Strait Islands, “is you get to just switch off from the world. You find a sort of peace that once upon a time used to exist in most parts of the world.”
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I’ve barely been in the Torres Strait 24 hours, but her words ring true to me. After stepping off the plane at Horn Island and riding the slow ferry across to Thursday, late rains prickling the sea’s surface, I feel my city straightjacket loosen and fall away.
The easy conversations I have in the coming days with people who are intimately connected to their culture and lore, land and sea, make this feel like another country. An Arcadian Australia. The Torres Strait is our northernmost frontier. It’s where this vast continent peters out to an archipelago of more than 200 islands strewn across blue ocean between Cape York and Papua New Guinea. Borders are liquid up here. So is the concept of what it means to be “Australian”.
The surest way to get your bearings and appreciate the luminous beauty of our far north is on a helicopter flight with Nautilus Aviation. The aircraft lifts off from Thursday, the administrative centre and most populous island – with barely 3000 residents – and heads west over the WWII bunkers and lighthouse of Goods Island. From there it loops back over the mountains and waterfalls of Muralug (Prince of Wales Island).
Then due east over Entrance and Possession islands (the latter’s where Cook claimed Australia’s east coast for Britain in 1770). Humpbacks frolic in the channel here between July and September. And then Punsand Bay – eyes peeled for crocs – to the tip of Australia. Look closely and you’ll see the seam of blue far below where the Coral Sea meets the Arafura.
Plus countless castaway beaches and the tell-tale mottling of coral reefs. The northernmost point of mainland Australia, and the southern Torres Strait Islands, are surprisingly green and hilly, the last gasps of the Great Dividing Range. The central islands are coral cays whose low-key splendour rivals the Maldives.
The eastern islands are dramatically volcanic, while closer to New Guinea are the mangrove islands such as Saibai and Boigu, Australia’s most northerly community. It’s not just geography but culture, language and dance that distinguish the 17 inhabited islands.
“One of the beauties up here is that every island has a different way of life,” Drummond says.
“But we all see ourselves as people of the Pacific.” Drummond – a model, mum, Indigenous talent-agency founder and crayfish-salad queen – returned to Thursday Island at the start of the pandemic. She’s happy to be home.
“I’ve travelled a lot in life. To come back here and think this is very luxurious, that the food we eat, it’s just on our doorstep – I’ve always taken that for granted.” Like many islanders, she describes herself as a “fruit salad” mix, descended in part from migrants who came to work in the pearl trade. On her dad’s side she is half Malay and Aboriginal “with a bit of Filipino”. Her dad came from Sarawak; other pearlers came from China, Niue, PNG, Japan, Indonesia.
Her mother is from Mer or Murray Island, up near PNG. Every Australian should know Mer. It’s the homeland of Eddie Mabo, the man who led the High Court case that established, in 1992, the right to native title for all Indigenous Australians.
Drummond explains simply how – and why – the case was won. “Our lore says don’t touch anything, don’t step on anyone’s land, without permission,” she says. “It’s all about respect and ownership. If you understand that lore, you understand how land rights came about with Eddie Mabo. That’s our lore of life.”
Despite their pivotal role in our nation’s story, the Torres Strait Islands are still a mystery to most Australians. Distance and logistics largely kept the islands off the tourist trail until recently. Launched in mid-2021 by Fraser Nai, a respected leader from Masig Island, and government consultant John Palmer, Strait Experience offers guided Torres Strait itineraries on day or multi-day trips from Cairns.
“Locals complained that no one can find us,” Palmer says. “Strait Experience is about connecting people to locals and their businesses.” The aim is to create a “malu”, or wave, that benefits all islanders, Nai says. “When the tide comes in, the malu doesn’t discriminate. All boats rise up.
That’s what we want to do with the business. We are trying to hold onto something so dear and precious, which is our identity.” That identity beats strongly at Island Stars, a cultural experience run by Joey Laifoo (part Torres Strait Islander, part Samoan, part Chinese).
Through the medium of dance he shows me how the winds and currents dictated his ancestors’ lives. I’m seated in the rear garden of his new space on downtown Douglas Street where three boys – Nathan and James Seden and Russell Fujii – are re-enacting the German March dance, inspired by the squalling clouds that march across northern skies at this time of year.
“It’s telling us the turtle-mating season is coming up and the fish are at their fattest,” Laifoo explains. “All the big sea mullet come in at this time of year.” The three boys, in grass skirts and headdresses, strut across a sand stage shaking rattles and barely concealing their smiles.
“We started this to educate children about our culture and give them the chance to perform and tell their stories by using this knowledge that has been passed down for thousands and thousands of years,” Laifoo says later over a banquet of spiced and cured fish (known as namas), damper, chicken curry and the coconut-creamy yam dish sop sop.
Before we eat he gives thanks to the ancestors and to Thursday Island’s traditional owners, the Kaurareg Aboriginal people. “It’s just like if you went to someone’s home and ate some of their food, you would thank them,” he says of the thanksgiving ceremony. “That’s why everything has been maintained here for so long, because we respect the land and we respect Mother Nature.”
From Thursday Island it’s a quick 10-minute ride by blue-and-white ferry to Friday Island, where Kazuyoshi Takami is waiting on the jetty in a natty outfit of denim shorts, striped shirt and gleaming white gumboots. His cap says “Kazu Pearl”, the business he runs here in paradise. Takami-san emigrated here almost 50 years ago after signing on for the job during a recruitment drive at his agricultural college in Japan.
He was 18 and open to adventure. In the mid-1980s when the company folded, he and a fellow pearling technician pitched in to buy the business. Today he operates the Torres Strait’s last pearl farm with his right-hand woman Rhonda Shibasaki, whose Japanese grandfather came here as a pearl diver.
They’re the sole survivors of an industry which, in the 1890s, accounted for half the world’s pearl-shell harvest. Takami-san still does all the diving, tends the oyster baskets, seeds the oysters and prepares lavish lunches of raw and cooked fish he’s caught himself. (Palmer describes Kazu Pearl as “the best sushi restaurant in Cairns”.)
“Takami-san doesn’t let anyone else do anything with the food,” Shibasaki tells me. “He’s very particular in terms of quality.” He shares Friday Island with Shibasaki, usually one or two Japanese visa workers, and three fine horses he took in after a friend left a nearby island.
He strikes me as one of the happiest people I’ve met. “I love this nature, like this,” he smiles, gesturing at his flourishing gardens and the pearl beds beyond. “There’s a lot of work – it never stops. But I like a busy day.” Back on Thursday Island, Makai Café looks like the closest thing to a social hub. Workers throng here each morning for the island’s best coffee and gossip.
But the true social hotspot is a stone’s throw away at the ferry shelter. It’s there that I bump into Milton Savage, chair of the Kaurareg Native Title Aboriginal Corporation. He tells me about his plans to build a cultural village on Muralug, with a walkway running via waterfalls to the island’s highest peak.
“From there you’ll walk south from the middle of the island and follow the river system all the way to the sacred waterhole,” he says. “And they can have a dip there. And we can teach people our culture and our history.”
I also meet Aunty Camilla Sabatino and Aunty Laura Wren in the shelter. Both are waiting for ferries home to Kirriri (Hammond Island) and Muralug, respectively. We chat about swearing schoolchildren (scandalous!) and the weather – specifically their chilly winters when temperatures drop to 22 degrees Celsius. “When I go to bed I wear socks and a jumper,” Aunty Camilla says gravely.
It’s customary to greet everyone you meet up here. The Torres Strait Island Regional Council website advises visitors to “acknowledge everyone you pass as you walk around in a community, to reinforce a positive image of yourself. Take a genuine interest in people without being intrusive.” Even the kids call out greetings and stop for chats. They’re possibly the friendliest youngsters I’ve ever met.
Dirk Laifoo collects me from the ferry shelter in his tinny for a scenic tour of his backyard. I invite the aunties to join us and they shriek with laughter. “That sounds nice!” cries Aunty Laura, but she has a ferry to catch. Dirk, Joey’s uncle, does laid-back island tours by taxi and ocean tours by tinnie.
He’ll take you as far as the tip, but today we’re just pootling about the inner islands, keeping eyes peeled for turtles, which pop up occasionally, and dugongs, which do not.
We skirt dreamy beaches and deserted islands including one made entirely from discarded pearl baskets. It’s called Basket Island, obviously, and it looks like an art installation. Beside it there’s a sandbank that would be the perfect spot for a sundowner. Namas and beers, maybe. There’s so much potential here.
As I prepare to leave, I’m reminded of a song called “Gumi Rangadh” performed by the Island Stars boys. It’s a story of three friends from Badu Island, one of whom has to stay behind on Thursday. “This is our goodbye song,” Joey says. “It’s a mirror of when people leave Thursday Island and they have memories of their time on the island. Wherever you go, your thoughts will always come back to this place.”
The writer was a guest of Strait Experience and Tourism Tropical North Queensland. Strait Experience runs several Torres Strait Island tours out of Cairns, including a one-day package of charter flights from Cairns, tours of Ngurapai (Horn Island) and Waiben (Thursday Island), a banquet lunch, cultural performance and islander interactions. straitexperience.com.au; tourism.tropicalnorthqueensland.org.au
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