Torres Strait
Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after Spanish navigator Torres.
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The Torres Strait, also known as Zenadh Kes, is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea.[1] The narrowest part of the Torres Strait measures 150 km across.[1] Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Australian mainland, lies to the south, while Papua New Guinea's Western Province is situated to the north.[1]
Key facts and history
The first recorded European navigation of the strait was by Spanish navigator Luís Vaz de Torres in 1606.[1][2] Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple named the strait after Torres after finding his testimony in Spanish documents captured in the Philippines.[1][3] The islands were annexed in 1879 by the colony of Queensland.[4] An important pearling industry operated from the 1860s until about 1970.[4]
Human habitation on the Torres Strait islands extends back at least 2,500 years, according to John Burton's regional history for the Torres Strait Regional Authority.[5]
What the cited sources add
The Margaret Lawrie Collection, donated to the State Library of Queensland in 1996, documents genealogies of families across the seventeen Torres Strait communities.[6] In the 1980s, Torres Strait Island people began reclaiming the region's name, first suggesting "Magani Malu Kes" and later adopting "Zenadh Kes"[7] UNESCO added the Margaret Lawrie Collection to its Australian Memory of the World Register in 2008.[6] In both 2012 and 2013, authorities detected ten asylum seekers from Papua New Guinea in the Torres Strait each year.[8]
References
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hilder, "The voyage of Torres: the discovery of the southern coastline of New Guinea and Torres Strait by Captain Luis Baez de Torres in 1606", University of Queensland Press, 1980 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: In his 1853 book, The Three Colonies of Australia, Samuel Sidney expressed it thus: "During our war with Spain we captured Manilla by storm, and in the archives (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ganter, Regina. (1994). The Pearl-Shellers of Torres Strait: Resource Use, Development and Decline, 1860s–1960s. Melbourne University Press. . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: John Burton, "History of Torres Strait to 1879 – a regional view", Torres Strait Regional Authority (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/margaret-lawrie-collection-torres-strait-islands-1964-1998-treasure-collection-john-oxley. facts only, no text reused. slq.qld.gov.au
- "Mapping the Torres Strait: from TI to Magani Malu and Zenadh Kes", Queensland Historical Atlas. facts only, no text reused. qhatlas.com.au
- Wikipedia, "Torres Strait" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wordsworth, "Torres Strait looms as a new route for asylum seekers escaping PNG", ABC News, 13 August 2013 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Torres Strait (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Torres Strait (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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