Thursday Island got its name in 1848 and Captain Stanley, who was in charge of HMS Rattlesnake, recorded the names of three islands in the area – – Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday islands. Admiralty maps in 1855, however, reversed the order of the islands. The island was actually spotted on a Sunday.
Thursday Island is situated approximately 40 KM from the main land of Australia, and is part of the Prince of Wales island group or inner islands of the Torres Strait. We are now in the tropics, and that means hot, muggy weather. Harvesting pearls was a huge business until plastic buttons became popular in the 1940s and pearl buttons became unfashionable.
We have been here probably four times. There isn’t a whole lot here: there’s a grocery store, pharmacy, café, and 2 hotels. Town is approximately three blocks long. On our included excursion today we tendered to shore, and this is probably the longest tender ride I’ve ever been on – – about 40 minutes. I found out later that the ship moved farther out because of the currents.
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| Our first time here March 2011 |
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| Here we are on the tender |
Anyway, we got to shore in the afternoon, and we walked up to town to a community center, where a group of children of all ages put on a show about their heritage and their historic language. Thankfully, the community center was air-conditioned. The show was short, but sweet. After the show, they had a taxi to bring the walking impaired back to the pier.
Food for thought: we visited Thursday Island on Sunday and visited Whitsunday Island on Thursday.