Day13. 28th October Thursday Island, Horn Island, Loyalty Bay

An early start today as we are off on an adventure.

We have  a little trip planned to firstly visit Thursday Island and then a tour of neighbouring Horn island.

We have organised the trip through our camp ground and the owner has also offered to drive us to the jetty ( not far , next beach) 

We had concerns parking at the jetty, just because of the safety of leaving everything we own there for the day. So this option worked perfectly.

Onto the ferry for 1 hour trip to Thursday Island, again marvelling at the turquoise blue of the water.

Met Liberty who is husband of the husband and wife team running the Torres Strait Heritage tour company.

This bloke knows so much, a TI native but could seriously talk under water and then some.

We visit the cemetery, which we have been to before. Memorable because of the huge amount of essentially unmarked graves of the Japanese pearl divers. These guys gave their lives in pursuit of fortune.

It is widely assumed that they died from the “bends” as they didn’t take the time to decompress.We drove the streets of town, checking out a couple of churches and the up the steep drive to The Green Fort.

Of course, the views from up there were fabulous as you can well imagine.

Time to move back to the jetty to catch our ferry to Horn island. Well, I can tell you this island is a huge surprise for  me and perhaps the others.

Horn island was a hugely important defensive position during WW2. It had an airfield and heavy anti aircraft regiments. 

Vanessa is the wife in the husband and wife team and her knowledge, dedication and respect is extraordinary.

Her background is that of a teacher and she has become the island historian.

She takes us firstly to the centre of the operations where they did the calculations and plotting, then sending information to the weapons. 

The historical society have restored a heavy anti aircraft weapon, took them many years to actually find it and then restore it.

We also found another gun platform with a plaque of names of those that served in this area.

Graham, travelling with us saw the name of his relative he thinks. Whilst we were having some lunch, Vanessa went to do some research in the archives .

( yes it was his relative and no one knew he had been enlisted)

Great trip.

Back to the ferry for the trip home and dinner in the lovely bar at the camping ground.