Badu (Mulgrave Island) is one of the northernmost of the Torres Strait settlements; pretty much halfway to Papua New Guinea.

In 1975 Warwick Hood, the naval architect got me an interesting project funded by the Federal Government. It was part of an aid project to help the locals of Badu develop some skills. It is interesting that forty years later this topic is in the news again after Tony Abbott’s recent visit to the Torres Strait Islands.

The project was to build two 20 foot launches to be deployed at Badu.  The idea was for me to build them at Kurnell, then dismantle them, package them up, ship them to Badu and then go there to help the islanders reassemble them.

Getting to Badu back then was a bit tedious; nowadays it’s just a helicopter flight.  After flying from Sydney to Cairns, you had to fly on in a smaller plane to Horn Island and then take a small launch to Thursday Island. After an overnight stay on Thursday Island, there was another small launch trip through the coral reefs to Badu, situated 60 miles North West of Thursday Island.

When Warwick and I arrived we found that the officer in charge of the island was totally unprepared for the project.  The premises were open to the weather, the southeast trade wind was blowing continuously at this particular time of year, and the generator that was to supply power had been un-crated and was lying out in a paddock unusable. However, after a while, we managed to get things off the ground and got the first boat together and into the water. I had organised for one of my men to come up and put the second boat together.

On completion the boats were supposed to help develop a small fishing industry. The last I heard, about twelve months later, both boats were on the beach near Cooktown in a wrecked condition.

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Another project that was underway at the time was turtle farming. Turtles were plentiful in the Strait.  The organisation of this project was just as chaotic and it also failed fairly quickly, happily for the turtles.

Both projects were a total waste of the Australian taxpayers’ money but provided much needed work for my team at the time.

Badu was a fascinating experience. On this trip the King gave a feast in our honour and I had the opportunity to try eating dugong flesh, a seal-like animal very much like pork to taste.

Christianity had been introduced to the Torres Strait in the 1870s by the London Missionary Society and continues strongly today. July 1, 1871 is the symbolic date that Christianity was accepted as the dominant paradigm for religious faith. It is still celebrated every year as the ‘Coming of the Light Festival’.

Moto Charlie was an elder of Mulgrave Island and Warwick and I met him when we arrived. He was a thoroughly nice old man and very softly spoken. Moto was connected with the local church on Badu and I did some work for him on the roof of the church during our stay; there is a photo somewhere of me atop the church doing the repairs.

An interesting spectacle on the Island was that, with the constant trade wind blowing, most people flew a kite day and night; the rule being that the King who ran the island had to always have his kite flying higher than anyone else’s.

Apart from fishing the only work available to the young men of the area was pearl diving off pearling luggers.  These were full suited divers – including leaden boots and hard brass helmets. Their air was pumped down from the deck of the lugger. Isolated coral outcrops, previously known by British sailors as niggerheads, grow up from the ocean floor and were a constant threat to the divers. Quite often their airline would be cut by the coral outcrops and the unfortunate diver drowned. The Badu cemetery has plenty of evidence of this occurrence.

Another thing I noticed in the burial grounds was the regular leaving of supplies on the gravesites.  Food, toothbrushes and soap; the things you take when going away for a trip.  After the burial, when the family had saved enough money, they would erect a headstone, wrap it up in a bright piece of material, and about a week later they would have a great gathering and unveil the headstone along with a great party. This ceremony was ‘Coming of the Light’ Christianity mixed with tribal tradition.

My time on Badu was an interesting experience.