On Tuesday let’s visit Thursday (Island), and on Thursday, why not pop in on Friday (….island)? So what was the plan, ye old discoverers of limited imagination, once you’d run out of weekdays? How about Ile de 10am? Brunch Island perhaps?
It turns out that Thursday is quite busy on Tuesday. This group of Islands form a magnificent set of bays and waterways. Harmonious and seemingly industrious, TI is a surprise – it feels tropical, but no one is sitting around under trees. Neat roads, gutters (!), newish cars plying an island only 4km square, the place is a perplexing cocktail of island calm and mainland order.
Who would have guessed the Russians were about to invade in 1893? The Fort is a magnificent testament to late 19th Century global madness – strategically valuable coal laden hulks providing critical fuel for traders, considered so vital that they placed 3 almighty guns atop the biggest hill.
The biggest wonder, though came at the cultural centre – seeing the amazing ceremonial masks of the Torres Strait Islanders. Wildly exotic, they range from harshly aggressive to lunatic cross-eyed. Wonderful.
Ross and Iain waved goodbye after a fabulous dinner at the Grand Hotel, Thursday Island’s finest. They asked us to come early because they were ‘fully booked’. In TI, fully booked means a party of 12, and probably 8 unused tables. Ah, we’re in the tropics after all.
Bernardus and Karsten showed up the next morning, keen to get going. We raced up to see the Fort, flashed through the cultural centre, stopped for a burger and some cultural immersion back at the Grand Hotel, then headed out to sea at sunset, through those magnificent straits. Glorious afternoon sailing, then into the Gulf in darkness…..
