Thursday Island (Waiben)

Thursday Island (Waiben)

Time to round Cape York! Arrrrr. Ok, so not exactly Cape Horn but good enough for me. We set off early one morning to pop across from Mt. Adolphus Island to Thursday Island. And of course there was a drama – the windlass was stuck again (it had brought the anchor up, just wasn't going to let it back down when we got to the other side), I was instructed to potter around the anchorage again while Karl tried to fix it again. He said he was going to have to take the anchor off to fix it, I warned him very sternly not to drop the anchor overboard (that would most definitely be a two splash anchor, even in these croc-infested waters), lots of stress and panic and then it all worked out. Sigh. My nerves can't handle this!

We had a gorgeous sail across though. The sea here is very shallow so it's a beautiful dull green/turqoise colour, it was windy enough to have decent waves with some pretty white breakers and spray, there was enough sun to light up the water and enough dark rainclouds to constrast fantastically with the bright green water. We listened to a Thom Yorke album that the entire crew (Rover, Ray and Grainne included, Doris was too far away to hear) unanimously voted never to put on again. Beautiful scenery on the way through the channel between Thursday and Horn Islands, that lovely coloured sea and low, green land. And then we came into the first anchorage we've been in in ages that had lots of other boats. Panic! We've completely lost our sense of how far you need to be from another boat for safety. We decided we'd found our spot when we seemed to be equally dangerously close to all the surrounding boats and the sandbank. So the level in the rum bottle got checked again. I've decided I like the being at sea bit and I like the being at anchor bit but the transitions are killing me! Maybe Valium is the answer. If only to save the rum. I think I see now why Moitessier kept going.

Well this is a great anchorage. We're at Horn Island (Ngurupai), across the channel from Thursday Island, it's more sheltered here. There are four sailboats (us, a Swiss couple, a French family and a local boat) and the rest are local fishing boats and a couple of ferries. The French boat turns out to be the one that was on the far side of the bay at scAwful Island with us for a couple of nights. Both these other boats are on their way to Timor. Shortly after we arrived our Swiss neighbour buzzed over to orientate us (them being veterans of several days already) as to where to find the dinghy dock, supermarket, laundry, pub and local crocodile. The next day we had a wee expedition ashore where we walked through the supermarket (an exciting activity for us now....”ooh, look, they have X and Y”) and had lunch at the pub which conveniently includes a beer garden with a view to Grainne at anchor. 

Horn Island has a population of about 500 and, apart from the township of Wasaga, the airport and the road between the two, is Indigenous owned land and permission is required to enter. It also seems to have the main jetty for unloading cargo ships. It had a military aerodrome during WWII and was bombed several times by Japan.

The cargo ship Trinity Bay which is one of the many we started to recognise plying the route up and down the coast on our trip up from Cairns.

The tides here are weird. It's the combination of wide tidal ranges to the west of Cape York with narrow tidal ranges to the east and lots of water flooding through a very small gap. Here's an example over a few days – two hours between afternoon high and low tides on Thursday 6th, only two tides on Friday, over 16 hours between Friday's low and the next high tide and 9 hours between high and low tides on Saturday. The world's gone mad.

On Thursday we decided to visit.......Thursday Island! It's a great little spot, I really liked it. It's the administrative capital of the Torres Strait Islands and seems to have squeezed representation by every single government department into a couple of buildings. Population is about 3500. 

Main street.

I was impressed by the high incidence of pubs (of almost Irish proportions) and then by the fact that they were clearly outnumbered by churches. 

 Church.

 Pub.

 Church.

Pub.

We toured two supermarkets. Wandered around the hospital grounds (some wards and offices have a really pretty view). 

Passed the Bowls Club (closed on this Thursday lunchtime). 

And then visited a late 19^th century fort on top of a hill. 

The 5 year old boy who lives inside Karl really, really, really enjoyed the fort. After running around pretend-shooting pretend-attackers for a while he made this video. If you want to hear the screeching wind, by all means leave the volume turned up, othewise here's what Karl was trying to tell you: built in the 1890s, a very unpopular posting at the time, used as a signalling post during WWII, views all around the neighbouring islands including our anchorage over at Horn Island, very windy!

So having covered all of that the only thing left to do was sample the pub culture. First stop The Federal Hotel (which had a Chilean barmaid, as did the pub on Horn Island, maybe it's a Torres Strait pub thing). 

Then the Torres Hotel (“Australia's Top Pub” i.e. most Northerly) which was a really proper pub with proper styrofoam stubbie coolers. 

And finally the Grand Hotel. Which was grand. Overall only 50% of the venues we sampled have Chilean barstaff.

Then we caught the ferry back to Horn Island and dinghied back to Grainne. Conditions look good for an escape westwards on Sunday so we'll set off again then.

School bus, Torres Strait style.