Thursday Island is the commercial and administrative settlement for the Torres Strait. Called Waiben by local Muralag, the small island is at the centre of the Prince of Wales group. In 1877, the Queensland government transferred its Torres Strait administrative base there from Somerset on the tip of Cape York. By the late 1880s a town had developed, and its function, as the distribution point for freight and passengers going to and from other islands, was established.

Thursday Island (T.I.) became the busy centre of the pearling industry as well as for onshore accommodation. After the bombing of nearby Narupai (Horn Island) in 1942, the entire T.I. civilian population was evacuated, and the navy requisitioned the pearling fleet. Many men whose jobs on the boats disappeared were among the 700 islanders who enlisted in the T.I. based Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion. After the war ended, many veterans remained on T.I., taking jobs with agencies involved in Island administration.

By the late 1980s, a third of the Torres Strait population lived on Thursday Island in the Tamwoy reserve. The Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs managed Tamwoy until the formation of a community council in 1965. Tamwoy and four other small Islander settlements on Thursday Island are now known as the TRAWQ (Tamwoy, Rosehill, Aplin, Waiben and Quarantine) community.

(This information is courtesy of Torres Strait Island Missions and Communities, © State Library of Queensland 1995-2003...)

	Thursday Island centre	World War I gun	View over hospital	Beach at Rebel Wharf
	The Customs House	Douglas Street	Teaching "Sit-down" dance	"Sailing boat"
	Three friends	Japanese memorial	Japanese Cemetery	View from Horn Island
	MORE T.I. STILL MORE T.I.