Roz and Rozzi Solomon
Many years ago in the 1970s I was very lucky to be able to visit Masig Island, also commonly known as Yorke Island for a week in the Torres Strait. My husband was doing his PhD on sea turtles, and at that time there were sea turtle farms on some of the Torres Strait Islands. We obtained special permission to visit the island. I'd always wanted to visit the Torres Strait. My elder sister worked as a Registered Nurse in the hospital on Thursday Island for 6 months and loved it.
Masig/Yorke Island
We flew by light plane onto the narrow airstrip on the island and were picked up by Dan Mosby in his orange Suzuki 4-wheel drive vehicle. It was only one of two cars on the Island at that time. The other one was a blue falcon owned by Dan's cousin, the Chairman, Joe Mosby. Dan was very proud of his car. He told us he built a special barge to transport it from the ship to the beach. He looked after it very well, brushing the sand out after each use.
Dan Mosby's red Suzuki car
We set up camp on the beach. The island was very beautiful and we had a wonderful week. While John worked with the turtles, I went snorkelling and walked around the island. There were lots of beautiful fish and coral just off the beach. I met many of the islanders who were all very friendly.
Masig/Yorke Island
The Islanders gave us fresh fish and we bought food from the local store. I did get a bit of a surprise one day on my walk. A very young-looking boy about 11 years old was spearfishing in the shallows. As I walked past and smiled at him, he propositioned me to go up the beach with him. I just smiled and said thanks, but no. He must have been older than he looked.
Masig/Yorke Island Turtle Farm
During the week, we also went by boat to visit some of the other islands including Sue Island (Warraber) and Coconut (Poruma) Island. Many people never get to visit these remote islands, so we were very privileged.
At that time Thursday and Horn Islands were the only islands in Torres Strait that could be visited without prior permission from the Queensland Government. I'm not sure what permits are required these days. For most of the week we were the only white people on the island. There was a white nursing sister who lived on Yorke, but she had gone with a Trachoma survey team from the south to do work on some other islands.
The islands of the Torres Strait are scattered over a vast distance, 225 kilometres from east to west, and 170 kilometres from north to south.
The Torres Strait comprises 17 inhabited islands, a few uninhabited islands and dozens of islets and cays. A Spaniard, Luis Vaez de Torres discovered Torres Strait in 1606. He described the archipelago as being
"inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked". Yorke Island belongs to the Central group of Torres Strait Islands. Sue, Coconut and Yorke are small, flat and sandy.
Masig/Yorke lies northeast of Coconut/Poruma Island in the central island group. It is about 160 kilometres northeast of Thursday Island. It is 2.7 kilometres long and 0.8 kilometres wide.
More than half the island is covered in undisturbed vegetation, including dense trees on the eastern and western parts of the Island.
Masig/Yorke Island had a population of 283 in the 2021 census. The airstrip cuts right through the middle of the island. Standing in the middle of the main street, you could see the sea at both ends. The Islanders were worried about climate change and the sea encroaching on their Island way back then. I'm sure they are even more concerned now.
On Masig/Yorke Island
Dan Mosby was the project coordinator for the turtle farm on Masig/Yorke Island, which was set up by the Australian Federal Government in 1970 in an attempt to provide employment for the Torres Strait Islanders. Dan is an intelligent and very capable man. When I met him he was a bachelor in his mid thirties and owned a small dog called Bushman. He told me he went to school on Thursday Island and worked on a ship, which travelled to New Guinea and down the Queensland coast for eight years. He was very happy to be back on Masig/Yorke Island (his island) and wanted to stay there.
Dan Mosby with Rozzi Solomon
Besides working full time at the turtle farm, Dan had recently started raising chickens. He had 186-day-old hatchlings shipped from Cairns. He planed to grow them to be broilers, and sell them for the table, either to other islanders or on Thursday Island. Dan asked us to help him weigh his chickens on the Sunday we were there. We spent a couple of hours weighing the chickens one by one, and Dan carefully recorded all the weights in his book especially for that purpose.
Dan Mosby weighing his chickens
We got to see all the sea turtles in the turtle farm. Dan even named a sea turtle after me "Rozzi Solomon". After the farms closed down, all the turtles were released at sea, so Rozzi Solomon is probably still out there laying her eggs on a beach somewhere in the Torres Strait. I don't think there would be too many people with a sea turtle named after them.
John and Dan Mosby
The Islanders are a peaceful, easygoing people, despite their ancestors being fierce warriors, who were known to have attacked British warships in canoes. Headhunting was common and witchcraft rife according to legend. I'm not sure how true that is, but I guess they were protecting their islands so I don't blame them. When we were there, the most arduous job the local policeman had was delivering any received radio messages. Nowadays there is probably fast internet.
The Islanders were skilled navigators with a detailed knowledge of the reefs. I read online since the grounding of the local commercial air service by CASA in 2007, access to Masig is by charter plane only. I don't know if that is still current.
The Islanders of the Torres Strait love to race their model yachts, which are hand-crafted from driftwood collected from the beach.
Usually, the colourful yachts sit on the verandahs of the houses but are brought down to the beach on special race days, which are held on public holidays such as Anzac Day, Labour Day and on some weekends. In July the inter-island races are held between the islands of Yorke, Darnley, Stephen and Murray. There is great excitement as these sailors pit their skills against each other as their grandfathers had done.
Model yachts
Speeds of up to 15 knots have been reached when a frisky wind is blowing. The boats travel in only one direction and must be caught at the finish line. Escaped boats have sailed on and reached the coast of New Guinea.
Sail boat races on Masig/Yorke Island
The length of the race depends on the wind and tide, but is usually about half a kilometre. Seventeen to 20 boats are divided into heats, each containing five or six boats which can vary in length from 90 to 150 centimetres.
The Mosbys are highly respected members of the island community. They are the descendants of Edward Mosby, a sailor from Baltimore USA, who came to Sydney in a whaling ship about 1870.
Yankee Ned as he became known left the ship and headed north to Somerset near the tip of Cape York. He sailed a pearling lugger and fished beach -de –mer, the black sea slug, which is a delicacy of the Chinese. Eventually Yankee Ned bought a boat of his own and sailed for the Torres Strait and Masig/Yorke Island.
The Chief, or Mamoose of Yorke Island led Ned stay on the island. Yankee Ned settled into the community of Masig, marrying Queenie, a local woman who bore him four sons and a daughter who helped Yankee Ned manage his local pearl and beche-de-mer business.
Edward Mosby died at the age of 71 years on Thursday Island without ever telling anyone the whereabouts of a pickle bottle full of pearls that were his lifetime treasure. According to some of the islanders the pearls are still hidden somewhere on Yorke Island.
Dan, a direct descendant of Yankee Ned told me the story of his famous ancestor and his precious collection of pearls.
Apparently he buried his best pearls in a pickle bottle near his house on the island, fearing someone would steal them. He got worried when he saw a Japanese diver watching him counting his pearls late one night. His sons and grandsons took over the family pearling and fishing business, as Ned could no longer go to sea after having his leg amputated on Thursday Island due to an infection which was either from a stingray injury or coral poisoning.
He spent his days sitting on the veranda of his home, scanning the waters of the Strait with his telescope for passing ships, and looking over his collection of pearls, the wealth he had collected over his years on the island.
A Torres Strait Islander with his yacht
Dan said the old man left the house one day to bury the pearls. He couldn't have gone far because he had a wooden leg, was on crutches and was only absent half an hour.
Ned had apparently planned to sell the pearls and take his children to America when they grew up, but he died suddenly on Thursday Island in 1911 without revealing where he had buried the pearls. He was about 71 years.
We did go and see the site of Yankee Ned's old house on the island and visited the local cemetery. I remember the graves were beautiful and had lots of gorgeous shells and antique bottles on them.
Another prominent family on the island was the Nai family, who have been there for many generations. Both the Mosby, Nai and many other Islander families have many descendants.
During a tour of the Torres Strait region in 1911, the Governor of Queensland, Sir William MacGregor, had a photo of an elderly man and two Islander boys, taken on Masig/Yorke Island. It was titled only 'Yankee Ned and his grandchildren'.
Yankee Ned with his grandsons
In his dispatch, which later became part of the records at Queensland State Archives, Sir William described his brief encounter with the old settler on Yorke Island, Mr Mosby.
In 1928, the Sunday Mail alerted readers to another of Yankee Ned's missing treasures – an old telescope on Yorke Island believed by experienced sailors to have once belonged to La Perouse, the French navigator. I wonder where the telescope is now too. It is probably worth more than the pearls. If anyone ever invents a detector to find buried pearls I'm sure Masig Islanders in the Torres Strait would be very interested.
In 1948, Queensland Governor Sir John Lavarack visited Yorke Island during a tour of the Peninsula and Gulf areas aboard the frigate HMAS Condamine.
The Cairns Post reported Sir John had met descendants of Yankee Ned Mosby –
"a colourful character of the Torres Straits, who married a Yorke Island woman".
The Governor had been told half the island's population of 177 were Mosby descendants.
"These Mosby men and women are outstanding types, industrious, progressive and intelligent" the newspaper observed.
I had an exciting time getting back from the Island. The plane didn't arrive on my day of departure and I had to get back to work at Townsville hospital. One of the islanders took me in his small boat out to meet a prawn trawler that was heading to Thursday Island. The small boat pulled alongside the trawler and I jumped onto the slowly moving trawler and climbed up the side of the boat onto the deck. Jumping from one moving boat to another was pretty exciting.
I always hoped to get back to Masig/Yorke Island but never did. I did see Dan again though, starring in the telemovie
"Remote Area Nurse" as Mr Ted in 2006.
