Thursday Island

Yesterday we headed over to Thursday Island or TI as the locals call it. I think it was somewhere around 45km from Punsand Bay where we’re camped. We took off early and it was a beautiful trip over, passing between some of the bigger islands to get there, one of which was Horn Island which has a heap of war history. Just on an hour saw us rock up at one of the jetties at TI.

(I’ve chucked in some maps this time for those interested)

We were then off on a two hour tour, which is about right as the width of TI is only around 3km. First up we had a look around the old fort which was on one of the two high points on the island – it was built in the early 1900s in preparation for the invading Russians, the locals say they’re still waiting! Next was the cemetery which had over 700 graves of Japanese divers who had died during the pearling days. Last attraction was the Crayfish factory where they explained how they catch them up here (by hand, no pots) and how they send them to Cairns and then onto Hong Kong by plane, arriving there alive.

Once the tour was over the first thing we got out of the way was our voting duties, apparently the northern most polling booth in OZ. We checked out the shops in town, the kids trying to find the best cloth and hat badges. I was quite surprised how developed TI is, they seem to have everything, including a quite substantial hospital and a number of schools. We dropped past the northern most pub in OZ for a shot and looked through the Cultural Centre which was very good, also having lunch at the great little cafe there – the kids thought the hammock in the garden was great.

The cruise back was interesting to say the least. The wind had picked up quite strongly and the skipper had to constantly slow down, speed up and turn to avoid smashing into some of the bigger swells. It was fun though, with a few people getting sick. And best of all, one of them was not Lachlan, he seems to have finally found his sea legs!

We decided to stay at Punsand another day, and we’ve had a very lazy day indeed, going for a walk in the morning. We’re heading south tomorrow, not yet syre where we’ll be tomorrow night, maybe another day on the coast somewhere.

The weather is still warm, high 20s at a guess. Interestingly we’ve had light rain off and on most days over the last three weeks.