The Torres Strait Islands

Islands between two countries

The Torres Strait Islands lie between the tip of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland and the island of New Guinea. There are dozens of them, scattered over some 48,000 square km of water, in four kinds: low alluvial islands near New Guinea, high rocky islands in the west (the largest is Prince of Wales Island), coral islands in the centre and volcanic islands in the east.^[1] People have lived on them for at least 2,500 years.^[1]

Seventeen of the islands are inhabited, in five traditional clusters: the Top Western islands (Boigu, Dauan and Saibai), the Western, Central and Eastern islands, and the Inner islands around Waiben, or Thursday Island.^[2] The Eastern islanders speak Meriam Mir; the Western and Central islanders speak Kala Lagaw Ya or Kala Kawa Ya, dialects of the same language.^[1]

The Spanish navigator Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through in 1606, but the islands became well known only in the late 18th century, when fishermen came for mother-of-pearl shell and bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber). Queensland annexed them in 1879, and the islanders lost their rights to their land.^[1]

A border at the doorstep

The oddity is how far north Australia reaches. Saibai is just over 3 km from Papua New Guinea’s southern coastline, and the family, ceremonial and trading ties of its people run across the channel.^[3] When Papua New Guinea became independent from Australia in 1975, a border through that channel had to be settled.^[3]

The treaty the two countries signed in Sydney on 18 December 1978 came into force on 15 February 1985.^[4] In it, Papua New Guinea recognises Australia’s sovereignty over a list of islands close to its coast, including Boigu, Dauan and Saibai, as well as every island south of the line that divides the seabed.^[4] No other Australian island lies north of that line, and the treaty caps the territorial seas of the listed islands at three miles.^[4]

The treaty draws two different lines, one for the seabed and one for fisheries.^[4] Around them it sets up a Protected Zone, whose main purpose is to protect the traditional way of life of the people who live there, including their traditional fishing and free movement. Each country keeps letting the other’s traditional inhabitants move freely and carry out traditional activities in and near the zone.^[4]

“to acknowledge and protect the traditional way of life and livelihood of the traditional inhabitants including their traditional fishing and free movement”^[4]

Mabo

On 3 June 1992 the High Court of Australia recognised that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Mer, or Murray Island, one of the Eastern islands.^[5][2] In recognising the Meriam people’s rights to their land, the court held that native title existed for all Indigenous people, and it made terra nullius, the idea that the land had belonged to nobody, a legal fiction. Native title laws followed the next year.^[5]

In 1994 the Torres Strait Regional Authority was set up in response to a push for more local autonomy. Its central council sits on Thursday Island.^[1]

The Torres Strait Islander flag

The islands have a flag of their own. It was designed by the late Bernard Namok of Thursday Island and won a competition run by the Island Coordinating Council. It was presented to the people of the Torres Strait on 29 May 1992, at the sixth Torres Strait Cultural Festival.^[6]

Its green stripes stand for the land, the blue for the sea and the black lines for the people. In the centre is a white dhari, a traditional headdress worn in ceremony and dance, above a white five-pointed star. The star stands for peace, for the stars that seafaring islanders steer by, and for the region’s five language and culture groups.^[6]

On 14 July 1995 the Governor-General, Bill Hayden, proclaimed it a Flag of Australia under the Flags Act 1953. Unlike most official flags, though, it is still under copyright: the Torres Strait Island Regional Council and its 15 communities own it, and anyone who wants to reproduce it needs the council’s written permission first.^[6] That is why Geographys doesn’t show it, and the Globe Atlas gives the islands Queensland’s flag instead.