CALL AT THURSDAY ISLAND

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 167, 11 April 1935, Page 18

CALL AT THURSDAY ISLAND

Outpost of Australia

LIFE IN TROPICAL BACKWATER.

(By ALL.) Alanila, Alarcli 1. "Thursday Island? Oh, hot; the hottest place. Nothing to do. Only a handful of whites. Pearlers and traders and blacks; that’s all.” The usual description; no word of the beauty of its .surroundings. So that all preconceived ideas of the appearance of this remote spot were swept away by one lavish gesture of indescribable loveliness as our ship swung round the pointing linger of a wooded promontory, and discovered the little town asleep in a shimmer of grey sea and silver sky.

For two days the ship had steamed slowly, her engines often at half-speed, up through a maze of the islands that lie along the Australian coast inside the Great 'Barrier in the coral sea. Sparkling waters, blue skies, stifling heat tempered by the breath of the monsoon blowing from the north; the thud of quoits on the shaded deck; laughter, cheerful shouts of triumphant accomplishment; a game of deck tennis encouraged by enthusiastic onlookers; men in flannels, girls in shorts or brief linen frocks. And now, beyond the northern confines of a deep bay lies a passage of sage-green sea bordered by chains of small grey islands, leading the eye to distant hills that merge with the misty sky line. Two wrecks, old mastless hulks with rusted iron framework, desolate on flat shining water, give the final suggestion of mystery and romance. Explanations, disillusioning, but practical from a girl on deck:— “No; they were brought here and sunk for that film—AVhat was it? ‘Pearl of the South Seas.’ Just local colour, that’s all.”

And then the island we are heading for comes suddenly into view—the red wooden buildings of the hospital spread on. the grassy flat at the foot of tree and palm grown sweeps of upland, with a square verandaed house capping the profile of ridge, above them. A Vision of Beauty.

AVhat a picture! Scattered without any apparent plan over a couple of gently undulating, tree-grown hills, are bungalows, the usual buildings of commerce, and queer small huts. All this is glimpsed at first through and above a screen of perpendicular lines, which are the masts of pearling luggers moored on the near side of the jetty, bordering the curve of sandy beach. A few years ago. I am told, there were many more of these pearlers. It was a sight to come in on the early morning tide and see them with their sails up, all ready for the day’s work, or to run out to far-off beds of shell. But times are bad now; there’s a slump in the price of shell, and heavy taxation has played up with the profits. There are only about 50 luggers now, to the hundred or so there used to be. Thursday Island has reached a dead end. To the unaccustomed eye there is still excitement in this collection of small craft riding a sea that, with the swiftly-changing temper of the tropics, has turned from grey and serenity to a deep turquoise under heavy, black, dropping clouds, before our ship reaches her mooring. A storm, sudden, alarming in its intensity, was blotting out all landscape detail, enveloping the immediate surroundings in obscure Isolation. AVhite lightning cut through at intervals, opening up luminous paths in a flat, oily sea, lashed by great drops of driving rain; a tearing wind whistled through the rigging, the roar of thunder punctuated its wild chorus at dramatic intervals, and steaming heat, was the most definite impression. It was the anger of the heavens, uncontrolled. devastatingly lefoloose for two hours.

Then, a sudden clearance to a blue and shining sky, to silver, in a sea turned jade again. On land soft green fields soaked up the moisture, and the dripping leaves of huge almond trees gleamed under the mid-day sun. Down oil the jetty the rail was lined presently with fishermen, passengers. Chinese boys, a couple of Island blacks; and garfish lay in iridescent opal at their feet. A brilliant, parrotfish, pink and green and grey, was thrown back to his natural element. “You can’t eat these tropic fish. You never know when they’ll be poisonous.” Dozing Tlirought Depression. A yellow roadway bends down to meet the jetty, and branching to right and left wanders uncertainly, fringed by great shade trees, between the postoffice, the stores, the seven hotels, and the line of rather tumble-down Chinese shops-cnm-dwelliitgs that form the town. The displays in these latter indicate a decided contempt for the rules of modern window dressing. A few pieces of “shell,” a tortoise, a spray or two of white coral, some strips of , coloured Chinese paper streamers, some passe cakes, serve to indicate that goods of a sort, are to be -found within. But the accepted attitude towards the trade of to-day is conspicuous by. its absence. The post office, the principal hotel, one or Iwo of tile stores, look nourishing enough. Everything else gives the diligent, student of truth the impression that the inhabitants, of Thursday Island are dozing their way through their depression, but that when there is any sign of a return to prosperity they will be ready to greet it. Anyway, wITy worry?

Just beyond the shops lie, side by side, the Roman Catholic church anil mission school, and, next, the English church, with the flower-covered dwelling of the Bishop of Carpentaria on its right, and the Vicar's bungalow on the left. The Roman Catholic church is built high, on a terrace supported by a rock wall where the huge green loaves of calladium. splashed with their splendid centres of cerise, flaunt, a wild magnificence .of. colour, beneath the shade of spreading trees. On the veranda of the mission school, directed by a nun in a white robe with flowing veil of sapphire blue, little children, white, brown, yellow, and black, chant a spell-ing-lesson in unison. On the road outside the English church, a tall man in a white linen suit and white straw hat, argued with two natives, their hot black nakedness covered just adequately by white shorts ami B.V.D.’s. “I’ll do what 1 can,” he was saying,

“but he’s not my man, and—Do you want to see the church?” he broke off, seeing the si rangers, and put the eager question. “If you will go up and wait a moment inside, I’ll just get into my cassock—” and off he went, while the blacks faded away. An Historic Church. A straight path of white shell runs from the gate to the door of the little Church of- All Souls. Presently, the vicar comes, a thin aesthetic figure, his dark, chiselled face above the long white cassock. We inspect, the historic little church with its relics of an historic past; then to the Bishop's house, which stands rather at the back and above the church, to one side. Its latticed verandas are covered with a luxuriant growth of creepers, which reach in festoons towards a potting-house below, and catch and hang to the branches of the trees around. A poinciana tree stretches its lacy green like a tent above a great clump of calladium. a few scarlet blossoms still scattered over Hie lop. among the long black seed-pods left from Hie season's flowering. llybiscus hybrids are in flower—pink of all shades—against one side of the deep trellised basement of the house, and another creeper with big shining leaves and huge bright yellow flowers is draped over a wall in a sunny patch. “If you had seen all this three weeks ago you would have had quite a different impression.” says the vicar. “We were dried up after a long depressing spell of drought. Everything wis burnt to a brown desolation. But the rain came, and the result was as you see.. The grass became green again, ami the trees and plants recovered, almost overnight. "Thank you for coining." We were saying good-bye at the gate before emerging again into the glare of the yellow road. “I have been here for five years, and if it were not for the people who pass through and who come to see the church, life would some-, times be rather lonely There are few Europeans on the Island, and we are apt to grow groovy. To-day I was afraid I was to have no friends.”

Women's feet have, on the average, increased in size during the past few vears. lint size eight is still exceptional.