Free Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means by Charley Boorman Page B

tender.’
    The area was dotted with islands, thirty or forty of them, and there were plenty of lighthouses that had to be maintained.
    As we closed on the dock at Thursday Island it dawned on me that the first leg of the journey was almost over. We had left the mainland behind and in a day or so we would be landing in Papua New Guinea. I wondered what it would hold for us. We had heard all sorts of conflicting stories and I could feel the butterflies (that seem to plague me) starting up again. I really do have to stop worrying about the future. One day at a time, Charley, just deal with what’s in front of you.
    So I concentrated instead on the fact that we had a couple of days on this historic island. Having said goodbye to Ben and Rob, the four of us were on the dock looking up and down the road for any sign of a cab. But this was a very quiet place. There were few cars about and none of them were taxis. We had decided to transport our gear on foot when a car pulled up and a local woman wound the window down.
    ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Where are you fellas going?’
    ‘The hotel,’ I told her, pointing into town.
    ‘Do you want me to give you a lift?’
    ‘Could you? That would be very kind.’
    ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you two at a time.’
    Her name was Louisa and she worked in local government. Her daughter Nancy was in the passenger seat and Louisa told us she was just out of hospital. Nancy had terrible taste in men apparently, and had been on one of the neighbouring islands with her latest boyfriend.
    ‘She should’ve stayed in Cairns,’ Louisa said.
    Nancy’s latest squeeze had got so drunk he’d beaten her senseless and her mother had to have her airlifted by helicopter. They drove us to the hotel and suggested we come to the Grand tonight, a local bar where Louisa’s brother and uncle were playing in a band.
    They played reggae music and it was quite a night. The music was good, the food was good and we had a couple of drinks. Louisa’s brother was a big guy called Milton. His ‘mob’, as he called the tribe he belonged to, administered these islands and he played an active role in politics. The way he spoke about his culture and how much had been stolen from the indigenous people, he reminded me of Kurt at Pormpuraaw.
    In a way it was fitting - we’d flown into Sydney with its high rises, the Opera House and motorbikes. And with just a couple of days to go before we left, we were chatting to a man who traced his people all the way back to the Dreamtime.

5
    Of Fish Tails and Tail Fins
    THERE WAS STILL no definitive plan about how we were going to get from Thursday Island to Papua New Guinea, but if all else failed we could fly down to Cairns and take a commercial airline. A much better idea was to locate someone on the island who could fly us across, and that was what Sam was working on.
    The locals call Thursday Island ‘TI’, or sometimes Waiben, which means ‘no (fresh) water’. For thousands of years this whole archipelago was the territory of the Torres Strait islanders - nomadic Melanesians who had three languages and today still speak a Torres Strait creole. During the Second World War there was fighting in this part of the world. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, when America entered the war, both the Americans and the Australians had bases on TI. The Japanese did not bomb the island, though they did attack mainland Australia and Horn Island. We heard a story that they left Thursday Island alone because some Japanese princess had been buried here, but whether that was true or not depended on whom you spoke to.
    We were introduced to Ina Mills, one of three island sisters who had carved out a career singing traditional songs all over the world. While we were with the flying doctors, Gil had told us that her brother-in-law lived on TI and that we really ought to try to see the Mills Sisters. As it turned out, Ina’s twin, Cessa, and their other sister Rita had flown to Cairns