Torres Strait Ray Mears Goes Walkabout

I've been coming to Australia for many years now and it really is

a vast, sun-baked continent, but a fascinating one.

In this series, I'm gonna get into some more remote corners

to look at some fascinating people, places and events.

This is really exciting.

I'm in a forgotten corner of Australia in many ways.

These are the Torres Straits.

These islands are like giant stepping stones that link mainland Australia to Papua New Guinea.

It is the meeting place of two cultures - the Aboriginal cultures

from mainland Australia and the Island culture from further north.

There are over 100 islands in the Straits, 17 of which have permanent inhabitants.

I'm heading for Prince of Wales Island, homeland of the Kaurareg people for thousands of years.

I want to learn of their unique culture and tradition first-hand from the elders of the tribe.

I've also heard of the most remarkable story of bravery and survival against all odds.

It concerns a young Scottish girl who was shipwrecked here in the mid-19th century,

a time when fierce head-hunting warriors ruled

and death to intruders was the norm.

These islands have some incredible stories to tell.

Enid, one of the Kaurareg Elders, is my guide.

This is her homeland, she has intimate knowledge of it.

-Welcome to Prince of Wales, this is our traditional homeland - we call it Muralag.

-Muralag.

'The land here on Prince of Wales is sacred to the Kaurareg people.

'It's where they've lived for thousands of years.

'Before we're allowed onto the island, Enid calls to her ancestors

'for their guidance and permission to be here.'

Oh!

Oh!

KAURAREG LANGUAGE

I just did a traditional welcome and I asked our ancestors

to look after us today and to guide us in what we're doing.

Provide food,

bush food and make it easy for us to find it.

Enid is satisfied her ancestors are happy for us to be here and for me to explore the island.

I can't wait to have a look around.

You know, one of the things I really like to get a grip with as soon as

I find myself somewhere new are the trees and the plants around me.

Because the skills of bushcraft are universal - fire,

shelter, water, string, all those techniques are similar, what varies

are the species that we use and I've already seen a few familiar friends here and it feels really good.

A paperbark tree. Paperbark's incredibly useful material.

Aboriginal people all over Australia have used this as a means

of making shelter and for cooking.

And you can remove large sheets of this bark

for fire lighting.

Use it rather like

tin foil for cooking in the embers of a fire,

or you can use it just for shelter.

We know that here on Prince of Wales Island in the past, the indigenous people, the Kaurareg,

they used to light pieces of this and they used to walk around at night, that was their torch.

One of the interesting things about coming to the Torres Straits is that

when you see botanical information for this part of Australia,

there are lots of references to the people of the Torres Strait Islands

because they use things in an unusual way.

There are a lot of toxic plants that they would process to make edible.

So it's very exciting to be here and have the opportunity to learn about many of those traditions.

Having found the paperbark trees, I want to have a go at building a traditional Kaurareg shelter.

I've read books, but they can only tell me so much.

I'm going to have to use my knowledge to fill in the gaps.

This is the wood from coastal hibiscus,

which is what I think they would have used for shelter building.

I've got some hibiscus, but I don't have enough for all the poles,

so I've had to make up with other sticks from the bush.

But I'm gonna take this bark off so I can use it as string.

It's very, very strong and in fact,

this was the bark that was used to make the bow strings for the Torres Strait Islanders' bows.

LOCAL MUSIC

BRANCH SNAPS

Oh, use him for something else.

Looking pretty good.

It's only when you try to reconstruct a shelter like this

that you realise what information we don't have, because the observers

who recorded these shelters didn't record what knots were used to tie them together.

So I'm making do with a whole range of knots, in fact, that suits the situation.

Lots of different knots I've seen used in different parts of the world for this sort of purpose

and it's all coming together quite well.

I've made this on a scaled-down version and despite several people gathering bark all day,

we haven't really got as much as I need even for this small shelter.

So I'm trying to make the best of a bad job here really. Certainly keep the rain off.

I know from journals kept at the time

this was the sort of shelter the shipwrecked girl would have seen.

Her name was Barbara Thompson and she was just 16 when she was washed up here in 1844.

Then, fierce warriors protected these islands.

Head-hunters sailed the waters and cannibalism was commonplace.

Enid comes to sit by the fire to tell me more, as it was her tribe,

the Kaurareg people, who played a huge part in the Barbara Thompson story.

I've tried my best, Enid, to make a reconstruction

of a Kaurareg shelter, but we had trouble getting bark and I've made this smaller than normal.

Obviously they would have been bigger. But I was reading about all of these things in an account

of a girl called Barbara Thompson and that's somebody you know lots about, isn't it?

Yep, that's right.

She lived for five years with the Kaurareg tribe

and she learnt about their culture, their daily living

and how they hunted for food

and what they did with...

in regards to daily activities such as, erm...

..gathering of food,

what they had to do, you know, and rituals they had to do as well.

So she learnt all these rituals.

Well, she lived amongst you for five years.

She lived amongst us for five years.

-But you have a personal knowledge of her.

-Yeah.

-How is that?

Well, only because my Giome... Only because of the tribe,

plus Giome was a special person to us.

That was your name for her.

Giome is Barbara Thompson's, erm, tribal name.

But of course it was hard then for people washed up from shipwrecks.

-Yeah.

-They didn't always have an easy time from the Kaurareg.

Yeah, most people that washed up, they were killed.

-Why was that?

-Killed by Kaurareg people, because they protected

their land, they didn't want anybody coming onto their land.

So she was particularly lucky.

She was lucky because the chief had lost his daughter three months before that, she drowned.

And Barbara had similar features to the daughter and they presumed

that it was her coming back from the dead, but she was white, she'd gone white in the water.

So, they took her in and named her Giome, after the dead girl

because they actually thought she was Giome

and that was the only reason she was lucky,

otherwise they would have killed her as well.

'Though Barbara's visit to these islands

'was under very different auspices, as a visitor myself,

'I can't help feeling drawn to her story.

'I've chosen to come here, but she was little more than a girl

'who found herself forced into a lifestyle that she had no option but to follow.'

The following day, the Kaurareg elders kindly grant us permission

to visit the beach where Barbara would have been brought ashore,

terrified at what fate may await her.

This is the beach that Barbara was brought to.

Can you imagine what was going through her head?

The day before she was brought here, she'd watched her husband drown.

Now she's brought to this island by the local islanders

and she'd have heard all of the horrific stories

of what would likely befall her as a shipwreckee here.

I can't imagine what it was like for her, it must have been appalling.

All of a sudden, she's a captive

and she has no control over her own life from this point forwards.

With no clothes to replace her tattered ones,

she lived naked amongst the Kaurareg,

the fierce sun causing her fair skin to blister and burn.

Missing home, she had only her memories to comfort her.

She kept her wedding ring, she'd managed to hide that in a scarf she wore round her neck

and she used to look at it and it would make her cry in the early days that she was here

and one night the islanders took it off of her while she was asleep

and threw it into the fire so it wouldn't remind her of the past.

To try and hang on to her own language,

she used to sing folk songs that she could remember from her childhood.

But it was a very difficult process and very swiftly, I think,

she must have learned to speak the language

and adapt to the way of life here.

In many ways, I'm convinced that she didn't really expect to be leaving this island

and determined that she would do all that she could to live here.

Barbara became a member of the Kaurareg,

learning their way of life.

She gathered coastal and land foods with the other women of the tribe,

travelling for days into the hills to collect wild yams,

learning the importance of the seasons,

making the most of her new life.

Tell me about the traditional lifestyle of the Kaurareg.

The Kaurareg were seasonal hunters.

Whichever island they wanted to go to for different bush tucker,

they went at a different season, then came back to Prince of Wales,

where they'd feed the tribe.

-So they knew each island, what it had to offer?

-Yeah.

These traditions, are these traditions still being passed on to the next generation of Kaurareg?

Yes, we do pass it on to our children and grandchildren, yeah.

We speak to them about stories and we tell them

our customs, our culture, but it's sad because we don't know what they're gonna do with it, you know?

Whether they'll look after these areas or they're gonna exploit it.

So I guess that's the challenge that they face, is finding a way

-to live a modern life and still retain the cultural heritage.

-Yep.

That's very difficult. That's true for all of the indigenous peoples of this part of the world.

Yeah, it's a scary thought.

It is a scary thought.

Enid may be the last generation of Kaurareg

to have this traditional knowledge and I feel privileged to share it.

Ray, this is a tree that

we use when we want to preserve our fire.

Ah-ha. Yep.

We call it myrth.

It burns really slow, it takes a long time to burn.

As it gets near the end bit, you can then light another one and burn another one,

carry the fire so it lasts...

Did you carry fire like this on canoe journeys?

Yeah, they carried that in canoe journeys

to preserve it until they get to another island.

-Murk?

-Myrth.

-Myrth.

-Myrth.

-Myrth.

-With the T-H.

-With a T-H - myrth.

-Yeah.

-OK.

I'll get there eventually!

These dried seed heads were really important.

They burn very reliably and slowly, enabling people to transport fire over long distances.

-What's this red fruit here?

-This is one of our bush foods, bush tucker.

It's... We call it the yarakakur.

I've seen this, it's a peanut tree, isn't it?

It's a peanut, yeah. It's a bush peanut and what we normally do is...

we pick the black peanut

-and we just peel the hard shell off it.

-Yeah.

And as you can see, there's a peanut inside.

I've read about this, but I've never tried one before

cos I've never been in the right place at the right time of year

to be able to taste this, I'm looking forward to this.

It tastes a little bit like peanuts.

Hmm, crunchy. Hmm, tastes a lot like peanut.

It's really nice. That's lovely.

It's good little snack when you're walking through the bush, you know?

-Shall we go have a look at something else?

-Mm.

Bush peanuts provide a good source of protein and B vitamins

and a high fat content makes them a great source of vital calories.

And they do taste just like peanuts.

The tide is out and we're headed into the steamy mangrove swamps,

where Barbara would have foraged with the tribe.

Enid and I are on the hunt for an elusive mollusc -

the mud mussel or uckle.

The Kaurareg still collect them today

and they taste great on the barbecue.

Tradition dictates that the first one found must be offered

to the ancestors as respect and to ensure good foraging.

KAURAREG LANGUAGE

'Bring the soil that holds the food above the ground

'and take the soil that holds nothing below the ground.

'Thank you. That's what I said.'

'We're joined by Lana, here to give me a lesson in uckle spotting.'

..Hole here and you can see inside, like, if you sweep away the leaves,

the uckle is laying inside, inside the water.

-Yeah.

-So they obviously follow the water down as the tide goes out.

Yeah, absolutely.

They like to be inside the water, specially when the tide comes up,

you know that they're in there.

Right, OK.

Let's see if we can find some more, eh?

'The uckle provided a staple part of the Kaurareg diet,

'full of vital nutrients, particularly in the rainy season,

'when hunting turtles and dugong became almost impossible.

'I can picture Barbara digging these fellows out with a digging stick

'made of ironbark wood and stowing them in a mesh dilly bag, strung from her shoulder.'

Here we go, there's one there.

Yeah, when you're looking for the uckle, you spread out.

'It's tantalising to think we're in the mangroves where,

'all those years ago, Barbara would have been foraging with the tribe.'

Once you start finding them, you can see how easy, yeah.

Really get the knack of it.

It's good for me, not good for the uckle!

Another one here, look. Got my eye in now.

'It's hot, steamy and the mosquitoes are biting,

'but I love this sort of environment

'and I want to document what I find in here.'

CAMERA CLICKS

Fantastic places, mangroves. They're absolutely

the supermarket of this environment and yet the number of stories of people who've been lost

in this part of the world and afraid to come into the mangrove because of snakes

and crocodiles, or becoming lost and have nearly starved to death,

when if they'd come in and spent a few minutes looking around

they'd have found the place absolutely teeming with food.

It's quite astonishing.

They're amazing places to come and be in.

'The tide is on its way back in, so we have to move quickly.

'You wouldn't want to get stranded in here!

'Whilst Lana cooks up the catch, I've spotted a plant I'm eager to ask Enid about.'

This is what I wanted to have a look at, Enid, this mangrove pod,

cos I've been reading about Barbara Thompson when she was shipwrecked here.

She mentions people used this for food during the rainy season

and it was a difficult time of year to get food here. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. That's when the northwest season is in

and the wind and the rain comes from the northwest

and it just stirs up all the mud and people can't go fishing, or they can't go turtle hunting.

The sea's rough and choppy and stuff and so they relied on food like that.

And do people still use it now?

Some of them do use it, yeah.

Interesting.

There's no doubt that Barbara's world was turned upside down.

Her life with the Kaurareg was far removed from the life she knew, but at least her life was spared.

Fierce territorial battles, head-hunting and cannibalism

were all part of life in the islands at that time.

As a light rain begins to fall, I make my way to another island,

to see for myself evidence of this brutal past.

This rock is fascinating.

Local tradition has it that this is where war clubs were sharpened

before war parties went out in search of their enemies.

But actually, it looks much more like a place where they would have been manufactured.

The clubs themselves were a disk shape and you could see

in these depressions it'd be easy to get a round shape by abrasion.

But then you've also got these narrow grooves here, which have been worn in over a long period of time,

which would be excellent for doing the sharp edge to the disk.

I've also seen a few bits of rock round here that have been broken

and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is where the club heads were actually quarried and manufactured.

It's a bit spooky, to be honest, there's a bit of an atmosphere here.

Barbara Thompson would have witnessed the warriors' barbarity first-hand.

She was appalled by it and tried many times in vain to talk them

out of head-hunting missions, but the men teased women of the tribe

by returning with their trophy heads and eating the victim's eyes in front of them.

In search of more evidence of this warrior past, I head for Horn Island, that played a vital role

in protecting Australia from Japanese invasion in World War Two.

I've come to speak to Vanessa Seekee, curator of the Torres Straits Heritage Museum.

The warrior ethos has come down through the generations.

Hundreds of years past, the Torres Strait Islanders were proud and fierce warriors

and that has come through the generations to their military service in World War Two.

Horn Island in Torres Strait was strategically vital

because if you imagine a seesaw,

you've got Horn Island is the middle, it's the fulcrum.

The Allies knew if they held Horn Island, they could launch from here

and they'd launch attacking missions into New Guinea in the north,

also logistical missions, support missions.

If the Japanese took Horn Island, they would then be able to launch south all the way down the east coast

and right down to refuelling in our shipyards down south around Newcastle and Sydney.

So Horn Island was in the middle, it's the fulcrum of that seesaw.

So it was very vital that the Allies hold Horn Island.

There are approximately 5,000 fellows that were stationed here.

American and Australian, army and air force

and hundreds of thousands came through on the troop ships

that went from Townsville and Cairns

up through Torres Strait into New Guinea.

Prior to World War Two, the Torres Strait Islanders, they weren't allowed to join the army.

They weren't considered citizens of Australia.

They weren't on the Commonwealth census at the time.

The Australian Government changed their mind in May 1940,

when they realised they'd need everybody

they could possibly get, so they opened the doors

to the enlistment of Torres Strait Islanders.

880 volunteered.

Now, that left only 10 men of eligible age in the Torres Strait

to hunt the turtle and the dugong and protect the women and the children.

It's the largest and it's the only indigenous battalion Australia's ever had.

It's true testament to the spirit of the islanders that 880 out of the 890 men joined up

and even more so when you learn that they were still not recognised as Australian citizens.

So why would they volunteer when they weren't on the census?

They couldn't vote and they were under such hardships and inequality.

I've asked a lot of Torres Strait islanders that question

and some of them, one in particular said,

"I did it for King and country. King George."

But a lot of them did say that they wanted to protect their island homes, but they did realise that

they could not protect their island homes like they had done in what they called, before time.

In years gone past. Because the Japanese were a much bigger army

than a neighbouring island's war force, so they had to come together.

For a lot of non-indigenous soldiers that came here, it was the first time

that they had served with, or worked with indigenous people.

Now, they formed strong bonds and because the Torres Strait Islanders

would take the non-indigenous soldiers out fishing and show them how to fish with spears,

how to collect fish, how to collect shells, how to collect crabs and so there was a lot of collaboration.

A lot of working together between indigenous and non-indigenous.

They got along famously.

Almost 100 years before World War Two, Barbara Thompson,

now part of the Kaurareg tribe, was learning how to catch fish

and make the most of what the sea and land had to offer.

She also learned the various ways they cooked their food.

One ingenious method that I've heard of, but never seen, is using a termite mound as an oven.

-Sam, you're from New Guinea.

-Yeah.

-And this is, you're making an oven.

-Yep.

What do you cook in this oven?

Yam, taro, sweet potato.

-Yeah, any meat?

-Yeah, it can cook meat.

So it's anything, really.

Ready for the fire.

Anybody got lighter?

Lighter? We don't use lighters!

We rub sticks together!

This really is an interesting sight, an oven made from an insect nest.

Using a termite mound as an oven, is a quick and efficient way to cook as the dense sides of the structure

reflect the heat, rather like fire bricks and it can be reused.

-There you go.

-Thank you.

What have you got to cook in there today?

-A mullet.

-A mullet.

And why do you cook this way?

Why not just cook him on the ground?

The old ancestors reckon

they don't want sand get into the fish or yam.

-Those ancestors knew a thing or two, didn't they?

-Yeah.

Yummy smell.

-Lovely.

-I'm a worried, Sam, if that wind takes the smell down the beach,

we'll have 1,000 people turning up wanting to eat that!

Oh, he looks good.

Oh, yes. Nice table here, look.

-Nice table.

-After you.

-Oh, hot.

-Hot.

Mm, yummy.

That's lovely.

Mm-mm.

That's really good. What are you baking for dessert?

Cooked inside a termites' mound.

Yeah.

As we tuck in, I'm reminded how bountiful the sea and land can be.

But I know from reading Barbara Thompson's account that times could be very hard for the Kaurareg.

The rainy season kept them on shore and they had to rely

on all their bush tucker knowledge to survive the long wet months.

Barbara's story is of incredible spirit in the face of the most appalling conditions.

This same strength of character is true of two ladies

who were just seven years old when their lives were altered for ever by a war they knew little about.

The story takes place on a quiet island 100 kilometres northeast of Horn.

Mrs Tapau was a young girl living on the outer island of Yam when a Japanese fighter pilot

returning from a failed mission in World War Two decided to vent his frustration on the islanders.

She's returning home to Yam after many years to meet with her old friend Mrs Sabasio

and together they're going to visit the beach where, as young girls, their lives were thrown into chaos.

You remember the time when the Japanese plane will come.

PLANE ENGINE ROARS

We not take any notice of what the war meant to us.

Only we notice when the plane pass and we look, "Plane with a red dot!"

Our mother was saying, "That's an enemy plane coming."

And we get frightened now, say "What, they gonna kill us, eh?"

And they say, "Yeah, they can kill us because they enemy."

MACHINE GUN AND SCREAMING

And when we saw the plane coming, "Hide it, come!" You run and hide.

SCREAMING

They fire the bullets cross there, but we hide in mango trunk.

That bullet come had been fire right there with that rock in front of me, ping!

We all crying and oh, it was frightening.

Scary day.

So they survived the gratuitous attack.

Hungry and too scared to return to the village, the men away at war,

the women and children now had to rely on their bushcraft knowledge to keep them alive.

After that, when everything we know, we came here.

Came hide in the cave up here.

We sleep up in that cave there.

All the family, all our family.

Yeah, all our family sleep there.

Three families we live up there, yeah.

We just spread mat and tarpaulin everywhere and we sleep, lie down

and find a place to cook our food and all that.

It's quite cramped in here, it's not level.

It would have been uncomfortable to spend any length of time in here.

To think that they sheltered here in fear,

it's quite evocative.

This house of stone we call that, where they were right up there

on the binocular they keep, to see you can see the plane.

Anyway, after two weeks had to plant our own garden and go out

and catch fish and come back again.

We live bush tucker.

Fresh fish every day.

Dig wild yam and sweet potato and cassava!

When we light a fire to cook something

while were guarding, after that we get, to out the fire.

Otherwise we might attract any plane that went past.

It was very dangerous here, day and night.

When we heard the engine noise come, "Out the fire!"

Pour the water on the fire out.

Scary days.

Incredibly, the families lived in the cave for four years.

It was a scary time, but the traditional skills passed down to them meant they wouldn't go hungry.

This is where the girls used to come

and look out and watch out for planes and for ships.

And had a fire here and there's a weathered depression in the rock

that looks like it could have been caused by continual fires.

It's a lot more peaceful here today.

The demands of filming mean that time is precious,

but I always make time to have a good look around

when I come to a new place.

Islands are particularly interesting as they can differ greatly from their neighbours,

not only in the things you find, but the way in which they are used.

Yam Island is no exception and a little beachcombing always pays dividends.

I've been looking on the beach and found

interesting seeds I thought you might like.

You see that square in cross section?

That's the seed from a tree called the barringtonia.

And in some parts of the world this tree was used as a fish poison and a very effective one it is, too.

I've been asking around locally and nobody knows about that, they just seem to use that as a toy

and that's one of the interesting things - you can have the same species of plant

in two different geographical regions, with two or more completely different uses.

And there's another seed here.

This is the matchbox bean that comes from a vine called entada phaseoloides.

Wonderful name and you find this growing

along streams in all the tropical areas in this part of the world.

It's got uses - you can use the bark of the vine for string, you can beat it to get saponin,

soap out of it, which you can wash with or use as another fish poison.

But the Kaurareg also had a use for it.

During the rainy season, they would resort to this for food and I've got one here I've split in half

and when I open that and you look inside

you can see that white material, that's what they used for food

and I find that astonishing, cos it's like ivory.

It's a lot of work to make that edible.

And it gives you a good indication

of how desperate they must have been at times for a good feed.

Barbara Thompson foraged for foods such as the matchbox bean

and the mangrove pods Enid showed me earlier.

They would have been cooked in a ground oven, along with other foods such as fish, turtle and shellfish.

Stones are first heated on a fire

whilst the meat and fish is wrapped skilfully in palm leaves.

This effective method of cooking is still very much in use today.

Once the stones are hot enough, the food is placed on top.

In Barbara's village, the women shared the oven, each pointing

their food parcels in a different way so that they knew which one was theirs when it was opened.

Branches are then used to cover the food and sand thrown on top to seal the heat in.

Nowadays a tarpaulin is also used to help keep out the sand.

It's going to take about two hours to cook.

When we first arrived here, the director asked me,

how would I light a fire if I was shipwrecked on the island?

Never one to turn down a challenge, I'm going to show you how.

The easiest way to make it would be to use a technique called the bow and drill method for making fire.

The reason I say that's the easiest, that you're not going to get blisters in the process.

You've got good mechanical advantage

and you're not wasting calories unnecessarily.

And it's not particularly skilful, which is a good thing.

This one piece of wood is going to produce

the critical bits of the apparatus.

A drill and a board to drill into,

both from the same piece of wood cos they then have the same hardness.

I don't want one harder than another, otherwise one will consume

the other and not produce the ember that we're trying to make.

It's a common misconception the woods must be a different hardness.

There's the drill...

..and there's the hearth board that's going to drill into.

I'll make a small depression in there to start with.

You may wonder, why am I doing this and not using

a drill that is rubbed between my hands?

And the reason for that is that those sorts of kits, hand drills,

are best made from green wood which you dry and prepare.

Although things will dry fast here,

there's a delay, whereas this I can go straight to a dead piece of wood

and reliably and easily produce the fire that I'm after.

So that's the drill and the hearth made, what I need now

is to make the bow and I've got this bent piece of wood here, there's no flex in it at all.

Just need to put a cord on that.

So I'm gonna use a piece of nylon cord, you could use a shoelace,

of course, or a bit of your clothing or even, you could make string

out of the bark of this tree, but that'll take effort and time.

Just for speed, I'm gonna use this.

That's a drill made.

I'm gonna have to tighten that in a minute, I know that.

And now I need a piece of wood to push down with and I've gone for

a piece of hardwood here, just chopped off a bit of dead wood.

And I need to give that, put a depression into that.

What I need to do now is just to drill it in,

kind of to kind of settle the whole equipment.

Not trying to produce fire just yet.

Bit of a leaf in the top of that for lubricant.

Bit of smoke.

And now I'm gonna carve a notch

so that we can collect this burning charred dust,

which will give us an ember.

And that's what's used to make the fire.

OK.

Well, let's give it a go.

And there's a really nice ember.

I'll pop that in there, just starting to glow.

I pop him in there,

pinch that together.

Just let the wind do the work.

And there's a flame.

So that's how I would make fire if I was stranded here with just what I had in my pockets.

You can see how quick and efficient that is.

Back at the beach, the food is cooked, but the weather has turned against us.

Nature has its own way of reminding you who's boss, as...

THUNDER RUMBLES

..rain stops play.

We'd planned a beach party here, but unfortunately, just offshore, there is a cyclone.

Cyclone Guba is just hitting and I guess we'd better cart this back indoors somewhere, eh?

-Yeah, well, we can't eat it out here, we'll be soaking wet when we're eating!

-We'll be drowning!

Yeah, I think so, too!

Despite it being a washout, it's great to see this traditional way of cooking still in use today.

We know from Barbara Thompson's story that the Kaurareg

traded with other islands and the mainland for other foods.

The Kaurareg traded decorative pearl shells found in these waters.

The valuable shells went on to play an important part in the Torres Strait Islands' history.

# Pearly shells

# From the ocean... #

When the Europeans discovered them in the 1860s,

hundreds of boats and crews from all over the world came to capitalise on this new wealth.

Pearl shells were used in the clothing industry

in the United States and England, especially for buttons and buckles.

Incredibly, at one time, the Torres Strait Islands supplied over half of the world's demand for pearl shell.

Just 39 kilometres off the northern tip of Australia is Thursday Island,

or TI, as it's affectionately known.

This was the centre of the industry.

I've come here to meet Seaman Dan, a legendary pearl shell diver.

I started diving in 1948 when I was 18 years old.

I was a deckie all the time, you know,

and the skipper said, "Would you like to put the helmet on?"

I stood up, I said, "Yes, please!"

So, he said, "All right,

"I'll come down with you in the other helmet to show you what to do."

Being an 18-year-old, you're full of enthusiasm,

you want to become a diver, you don't want to be a deckie all your life.

So, I go down and he showed me where the pearl shell was.

After I found, picked up my first few pearl shells, I was away then.

Just carry on.

So what happened? How did you become a fully-fledged diver?

I picked up so many shells.

In 1948, they thought I was good enough then, you know.

And the boss, Mr Duffy, he said,

"You're a young diver, you just start up, I'll try you out at £75 month."

I said, "Gee whizz, that's great!" He said, "But you won't get any wages.

"You'd better pick up shells now to earn your money."

So that first neep, it was an eight-day neep...

..so he came in with four tonnes, six and the other four divers

they picked up three tonnes and on my own I picked up one tonne, six.

He said, "Geez! That's not too bad for a young diver, a new diver."

He said, "Would you like to skipper this boat next year?"

I said, "Mr Duffy, I just started!"

He said, "Oh, I'll take a gamble on you."

-But it was dangerous work, wasn't it?

-Oh, yes.

You've gotta be careful what you do.

You've gotta keep your wits about you.

And then the sea is the only place I see it happen.

The bronze whalers.

They come up and circle around you, the school sharks.

You see them as sleek and they're built for speed.

And the other diver, he's about 150 feet away from me.

We could see each other.

Sharks are circling around me. The old divers used to say, "When you see a shark, signal for more air

-"and that keeps the shark away from you."

-Is that the bubbles going out?

Yes. The air bubbles.

And every time I do this I always think, I keep thinking,

"I hope the old divers are right!"

So the school shark, they're circling around you

and the other diver's looking my way and I said,

"Get over to the other diver! Get over to that other diver!"

I say to the sharks. They circle around me, then they go around him, circle around him.

He looks back and says, "Get back to that other diver! Get back!"

Oh, it's dangerous work. Yes.

The pearling industry eventually declined after the Second World War,

with the development of cheap plastic substitutes.

-Do you miss it?

-Well...I do.

But I nearly lost my life!

Out of all the narrow escapes I had, this was the worst one.

We're down 30 fathoms, six feet to a fathom

and I went straight down and drifted off the shell-bearing area.

And I thought, "Well, I've come straight down, I can go straight back up again."

It don't work that way. There is no short cut.

So we're running up and laying up against the stone rails.

And he come over to me, he said, "Skipper, are you all right?"

I said, "Yeah, I feel good."

And all of a sudden everything went blurry

and I had a sharp stab of pain across the back.

I collapse on deck.

Crew carried me over towards the ladder

and took the hard suit off my young diver,

put it back on me.

Two crew jumped over the side and stood on the ladder.

Air came through, they tapped the helmet, I fell back in the water.

As soon as I got under the surface everything come back into focus.

No more pain, but I had to go down to 30 fathoms again

to stay for two hours.

For my own stupidity, I lost a day's work and I nearly lost my life.

And I thought to myself, "Gee whizz!

"I think this'll be my last year of diving!"

-It was, too!

-It was!

-And you're a musician today.

-Yes.

I always liked playing the guitar.

At 12 years old, we were in the peninsula.

Can you remember any songs you used to play back then?

Er...

Our favourite was, er...

Up In The Sky.

So this is Up In The sky with Seaman Dan.

# Up in the sky so far away

# There is a place for everyone

# The moon and sun that always shine

# Out on the ocean waves

# As the lazy waves roll by

# Breezes blowing memories

# Oh, yes, yes

# Somewhere there's joy

# Somewhere there's sorrow Out on the sea

# It's always the same to me

# Are you from TI?

# You from TI?

# Well, I'm from TI, too

# Pleased to meet you

# Well I'm from TI, too. #

Whoo!

Fantastic! That's brilliant!

My time here is coming to an end,

but there's one last place I have to visit.

Since arriving, the tale of the shipwrecked Barbara Thompson has gripped me,

but the story has one last chapter and I have to leave the islands to follow it.

I'm on my way to the Australian mainland, to a bay just east of Cape York,

where five years after being shipwrecked, the final twist of fate

would again turn the now 22-year-old's life upside down.

At the end of the dry season in 1849,

HMS Rattlesnake was moored in this bay.

Evan's Bay, right at the top of the Cape York peninsular

and they would have searched this beach for water,

which is exactly what I've been doing and I know

when the Rattlesnake was here they filled their tanks from wells

they dug behind the dunes at the far end of this beach,

so it's really exciting to be here and to find fresh water exactly where it was described.

Little bit brackish, but it's fresh water and it's fascinating to think,

when I look at this it almost looks like it's been dug out.

This could be the well that the crew of the Rattlesnake dug, who knows?

What we do know is that once the ship got here they started to trade with the local aboriginals.

They traded them clothes and biscuits and knives

and it caused a bit of a stir and it wasn't long till word of all this trading going on

spread to neighbouring communities, including Prince of Wales Island,

where Barbara Thompson was living.

For her, it was a tantalising piece of information.

For some three years she'd been hearing about ships stopping near here and suddenly there was word

of a ship here, but one that was a bit different.

It was lingering a bit longer, it was trading.

She just dared for a moment to hope that maybe she could make it here

and there would be the chance of a rescue.

Eventually, the opportunity came.

Some canoes were coming to trade with the boat and Barbara could go with them.

She was the last to leave the beach,

she didn't want to seem too anxious, too eager to come to the ship,

cos she knew if she showed that sign, then maybe her family wouldn't let her come.

Eventually, she came to shore.

And then she made her way down this beach

and she met some British sailors, or marines, we're not sure which

and immediately they took her into their protection

and they brought her here, where the men were washing clothes and bedding.

And they started to talk to her, they asked her, "Are you English,

"Irish or Scottish? Were you shipwrecked?"

They recognised she was Scottish and called out to one of the other sailors, "Oi, Scot!

"There's a Scottish girl here!"

And that Scottish crew member came over and started talking to her and she understood his brogue.

They took good care of her. They gave her soap so that she could wash herself.

They gave her a white shirt that she could wear on top and a blue shirt that she used as a petticoat.

And now Giome became Barbara Thompson again

and they took her back to HMS Rattlesnake and she was safe.

Over the coming days, the ship's artist, Brierly, took statements

from her about her life and her experience and has left us an incredible legacy of anthropology,

with details of traditions, cooking techniques, the life of the Kaurareg, even their language.

It was a very special day back then, 16th October, 1849.

I came to these islands knowing little of their history or people.

Everyone has been generous with their knowledge and time, particularly Enid,

teaching me the ways of the Kaurareg people,

letting me explore her homeland and see for myself what has survived today.

But it feels as though my other guide here has been Barbara Thompson herself.

Through her story, I've been transported back in time

to gain first-hand knowledge of what it was like to live as one of the Kaurareg people.

I'll never forget the story of Barbara Thompson.

Above all, my heart goes out to her.

She really must have been one plucky Scots lass.

# Are you from TI?

# Are you from TI?

# Where the wild, wild wongai trees grow

# Are you from Torres Strait or any place including St Paul Way?

# Any place that's just around Mabuiag Way?

# Are you from TI?

# Are you from TI?

# Well, I'm from TI, too

# Pleased to meet you

# Well, I'm from TI, too

# Pleased to meet you

# Well, I'm from TI, too. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd