Bramble Cay
Located near the northeastern edge of Australia's territorial waters and at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, Bramble Cay (Meriam Mir: Maizab Kaur, Maizub Kau, a.k.a. Massaramcoer) is around 50 kilometres north of Erub (Darnley Island) in the Gulf of Papua around 55 kilometres from the mouth of Papua New Guinea's Fly River.
The Bligh Channel (Bligh Entrance) separates Bramble Cay and nearby reefs from those further south. To the north and northwest, the Great North East Channel separates them from the coast of Papua New Guinea's coast, about 48 kilometres north of the island.
The 3.62-hectare sand cay formed around a basalt outcrop — a remnant of Pleistocene volcanic activity — composed of sand and compacted guano with a low phosphatic rock platform at its southeastern end. It is surrounded by a relatively small coral reef and is relatively isolated from other reefs in the Torres Strait. Bare patches of compacted guano depressions hold water during the wet season. Bramble Cay is the Torres Strait's largest nesting site for green turtles, supports the region's only large seabird colony, and has the dubious distinction of being the former home of the Bramble Cay melomys, a species of rodent that became the first mammal species to fall victim to anthropogenic climate change.
Islanders from Erub travel to Bramble Cay to collect turtle and bird eggs during the nesting season, and grant people of the neighbouring Ugar and Mer permission to do the same. Certain families have ancestral connections with the cay.
Surveyors from HMS Bramble encountered the island in April 1845, and the Anglo-Australian Guano Company obtained a mining lease in 1862. However, since the low-grade phosphatic rock was low-quality, the company never established a permanent presence.
After at least five shipwrecks in the vicinity, the Bramble Cay lighthouse — Australia's northernmost navigation aid — remains the only human structure on the Cay. A 13-metre pyramidal lighthouse was erected in 1924, demolished thirty years later and replaced by a 17-metre automated stainless steel tower operating off solar power in January 1987.
Missing links:
Fly River
