Three Island Tour - Friday, Thursday and Horn Island

Carmen Friend
Jun 9, 2018
2 min read

We were lucky enough to have meet a couple who offered to look after Georgia for the day if we wanted to go and do Thursday Island. Cape York Adventures, do a 3 island tour - Friday, Thursday and Horn Island for $225 per adult leaving Seisia at 8am and returning at 4pm including lunch on Thursday Island. We booked the day before and we ready to go early the next morning - https://capeyorkadventures.com.au/thursday-is-3-island-tour.

There were 4 couples including ourselves plus our guide Ben on our tour. It was really good to have a small group of people and a guide who was happy to answer any questions and have a bit of a laugh and joke with us. Ben had great knowledge of the local and wider area of Torres Strait having worked in the area off and on for a number of years. Ben pointed out many islands during the tour - the biggest being Prince of Wales Island which you can pretty much see anywhere on the water. About 20 minutes out from Seisia, Ben stopped the boat and pulled out the map of the islands that make up the area. There are some 274 islands with only around 18 inhabited. It is only 80km from Seisia across the strait to Papua New Guinea or 4 tanks of fuel to the locals! Many locals fish in the area and depending on the weather and tides will depend on the type of fish which changes throughout the year. Mackerel were currently running.

Our first stop was Friday Island to visit the Japanese owned and run Kazu Pearls. The girls meet you at the wharf and invite you to look in the shop. The pearls are beautiful and are locally grown. There is no push to make a purchase here - if you want to buy fine if not that's fine too! Coffee and tea is also available.Then it was off to Thursday Island to meet up with our guide Frank. Frank would take us around the island pointing out historical sites including the old fort and cemetary which hosts a large number of Japanese pearl divers who perished due to the bends. Thursday Island is much more built up than expected. IT has full hospital, university, high school, polytech, primary and kindy, full nursing and doctors accommodation. It was much more established than Cape York which surprised us. Fish and chips and a beer was lunch at the Torres Hotel - the most northern pub in Australia. Horn Island was a stop in to visit the museum - interesting enough. Then it was croc hunting on our return back to Seisia.