Thursday Island,
Torres Straits, 1885.
I arrived here on the 4th September, and a quaint place it is! The wooded island looked very pretty from the sea.
The Captain came ashore with me to see that I was properly launched in local society, and first installed me at the hotel which is kept by an Irishwoman, Mrs. M‘Nulty. There was much “shouting” at the hotel bar, as every one asks every one else to have drinks. The sailors who carried my belongings to the hotel of course came in for their share. I was then taken along and introduced to the Collector or Sub-Collector of Customs. The young airified doctor who came up with me in the City of Melbourne is applying for the post of Health Officer, a billet worth £800 a year, outside of any private practice, as a hospital and a quarantine station are to be established. Great things are expected of Thursday Island; they want it to be made a naval station, and to be fortified, as then it would command the whole Straits. (Something of this has since been done, and a garrison is maintained there.)
Professor Payne rushed about distributing his advertisement bills as “Champion Shot of the World,” and I suppose means to perform here when he returns from Normanton. The Captain gave Mrs. M‘Nulty the strictest injunctions to look after me well, and to see that this and that person was introduced to me, and was more than kind.
The ship then left for Normanton in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and will be back here in a week, when I rejoin her. They all said good-bye to me as if they were leaving me on a desert isle, though it is anything but that.
