Port Kennedy, Thursday Island's harbour town. On the right of the picture with conical roof is the Cultural Centre housing a small collection of historical artefacts and interesting works of art and craft, ah.. and a very good café.

The anchorage there, however, is distinctly dodgy as the tide rips fiercely through so we anchored at nice calm Horn Island across the harbour, which is split down the middle by a flat reef a mile and a half long.

Looking across the reef to Thursday Island

The straits are heavily patrolled by Oz Customs and Immigration as people from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea constantly try to enter the country illegally. The locals here are not Aborigines but Melanesian as are the people of PNGuinea. Migration to and from these countries, which are close together, has taken place for hundreds of years but now it is a border issue. The Australians are also worried about all sorts of pests that could be introduced through illegal immigration including bee and honey viruses, termites (they have enough of those, their hills are everywhere up here), plant viruses or rogue species and the potential for introducing unwanted animals and rabies. The Customs boats are like small warships and are very dominant in the Harbour.

When we arrived here it was the region's designated day for the Queen's birthday, it was a Monday, a bank holiday and everything was closed. I can't remember what happens for the Queen's birthday in UK, I wonder if Sainsburys and Tescos close? On Tuesday we took the ferry from Horn to Thursday Island and found what there was in the town. We were greeted by some rather good street sculpture:

The roads were empty, we could wander about without concerns for traffic or crowds, it was so peaceful, even when the school had play-time, and the people were very friendly.

 The Cultural Centre was enjoyable, one exhibit in particular was amusing:

Better than throwing it in the canal!

Later, back in the anchorage at Horn Island we noticed that storks were feeding on the exposed reef.

Looking just like a few dots with the naked eye

and a poor magnification of these tall and elegant birds

Swallows were dipping and the smell of flying fox was in the air.

The economy is fragile here on the top of Australia, whatever is developed will need great sensitivity as, apart from small developments, this is real wilderness. Before world war 2 there had been a pearl shell industry providing mother of pearl mainly for buttons before plastics took over. Sad to think that many Japanese who dived here and numbers of Torres Islanders died for the button industry, usually from the bends and drowning, occasionally from shark attack. Hundreds died during a hurricane. They earned next to nothing sometimes only getting chits for acquiring limited provisions from the pearling masters. During the war these islands were used as bases for American troops engaged against the Japanese with many Torres Islanders fighting alongside. Lots of small air strips were built, some still in use. Interestingly some time after the war, the Japanese established here again bringing their cultured pearl technology to the islands but this enterprise was wiped out by a great oil spill disaster in the 1970s never to be revived.

Some want the wilderness to continue untouched valuing the more traditional way of life, they've seen entrepreneurs come and go and despise what they perceive as exploitation based on greed; others want a more robust economic future for their children. It is another conundrum.

We left when the morning tide turned in our favour, the boat was doing 5 knots and we were sped through the channel at eight knots due to 3 knots of tide with . It was a glorious way to leave the Coral Sea and on into the Arafura.

Looking for reefs on the way through the islands into the Arafura Sea