Torres Strait Islands
The Torres Strait Islands, an archipelago of at least 133 small islands, sandy cays and rocky outcrops spread across a waterway 150 kilometres wide at its narrowest point and almost 300 kilometres east to west — an area of 48,000 square kilometres, although the islands' total land area is 566 square kilometres — although only thirty-eight of the islands are inhabited.
Although counted as Indigenous Australians, the predominantly Melanesian Islanders are ethnically and culturally different from Aboriginal Australians.
While the islands are mostly part of Queensland — a few islands close to the New Guinea mainland are part of Papua New Guinea's Western Province — the Torres Strait Regional Authority, a statutory authority of the Australian federal government. administers them.
After Luís Vaez de Torres passed through the Strait in 1606 and James Cook claimed British sovereignty over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island in 1770, British administrative control in the Torres Strait Islands began when the Queensland government appointed John Jardine as Government Resident in the Torres Straits in 1862.
Jardine established a short-lived settlement on Albany Island before relocating to the mainland at Somerset in August 1864. When that site proved unsuitable, Thursday Island became the administrative centre for the Strait and the Northern Cape region. Queensland annexed the islands in 1879.
The islands can be divided into five distinct geographic clusters:
Top Western Islands (Gudaw Maluligal Nation): low, alluvial islands close to the New Guinea mainland:
Near Western Islands: high, rocky and largely barren.
- Badu (Mulgrave Island)
- Mabuaig (Jervis Island)
- Moa Island – Kubin and St Pauls communities
Central Islands: coral cays
Eastern Islands: densely vegetated; volcanic in origin
Inner Islands (a.k.a. TI Group; Prince of Wales Group)
- Kirriri (Hammond Island)
- Muralug (Prince of Wales Island)
- Ngurupai (Horn Island)
- Waiben (Thursday Island)
Dauan, the high rocky Near Western and Inner Islands, are a northern extension of Australia's Great Dividing Range: the remnants of a land bridge that connected the Australian continent to New Guinea before sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age.
Missing links:
Aboriginal Australians.
Papua New Guinea
Western Province
Torres Strait Regional Authority
John Jardine
Albany Island
Somerset
