Set Of Currents

In Torres Straits

Interesting Discoveries

From Our Own Correspondent

Thursday Is., July 30.

SOME natives of the island of Boigu (right up on the north-west border of Queensland, close to Dutch New Guinea) picked up on the beach re cently a lifebelt with the name “Eula lie” painted on it.

Apparently it is a relic of the adven turous voyage of Captain Blyth early this year, from Thursday Island to Port Moresby, in a small launch of that name. It may be remembered that when he was in trouble off Naghir Island the captain sent a New Guinea boy ashore with a line in an attempt to secure the launch, but the effort was unsuccessful; a life-buoy was thrown over to aid the boy, who man aged to reach shore safely and was later brought into Thursday Island.

The way in which the currents run in Torres Strait has always been a mat ter of interest, and from time to time various tide-current papers thrown over by American and Japanese ships in the Pacific are washed up in the cen tral group of islands after their run of several hundred miles, indicating that the set of the current is in to wards the Australian coast, probably up inside the Barrier, and that then the currents converge towards the Yorke Island and Burke Island group.

By an arrangement made a couple of years ago (through the efforts of the Thursday Island branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Aus tralia) copies of these “bottle papers” are now retained for information by the Defence Department.

In the case of the lifebuoy mentioned it had been carried up towards New Guinea and then along the channels separating Boigu and adjacent islands from New Guinea itself.

There was a case, years ago, of a ship being carried up by these power ful currents and deposited somewhere about the Fly River. She had been wrecked in the Eastern Fields, a dan gerous place for navigators to the west of Murray Island, and a Thursday Is land syndicate bought the vessel as she lay. When they went out to collect however, she was missing, and later turned up in the Ely River.