Thirsty Island



Travellers approaching a bush township are sure to find some distance
from the town a lonely public-house waiting by the roadside
to give them welcome. Thirsty (miscalled Thursday) Island
is the outlying pub of Australia.

When the China and British-India steamers arrive from the North
the first place they come to is Thirsty Island, the sentinel at the gate
of Torres Straits. New chums on the steamers see a fleet
of white-sailed pearling luggers, a long pier clustered with a hybrid crowd
of every colour, caste and creed under Heaven, and at the back of it all
a little galvanized-iron town shining in the sun.

For nine months of the year a crisp, cool south-east wind blows,
the snow-white beach is splashed with spray and dotted with
the picturesque figures of Japanese divers and South Sea Island boatmen.
Coco-nut palms line the roads by the beach, and back of the town
are the barracks and a fort nestling among the trees on the hillside.
Thirsty Island is a nice place -- to look at.

When a vessel makes fast the Thirsty Islanders come down
to greet the new-comers and give them welcome to Australia.
The new-chums are inclined to patronise these simple, outlying people.
Fresh from the iniquities of the China-coast cocktail
and the unhallowed orgies of the Sourabaya Club, new-chums think they have
little to learn in the way of drink; at any rate, they haven't come