Seven Hours In

Raging Seas

Brave Feat of Torres Strait Native Women

MANY Islanders throughout the groups and territories that dot the vast Paci fic have won deserved reputations for feats of heroism and endurance, but there has scarcely been a parallel with the feat performed at the end of last century by a young native woman of Darnley Island, Torres Strait, named Mauara Lifu.

Her courageous deed was recalled re cently when a handsome memorial of white coral and shells was erected by Darnley Islanders over her grave on Thursday Island.

At the height of the pearling season in March, 1899, the coast of North Queens land was suddenly swept by a desolating cyclone, and the fishing boats off Cape Melville received the gale’s full force. In the maelstrom of lashing seas and howling winds, 70, fishing ketches were wrecked, with the loss of seven white men and 300 natives.

When two white men were flung over board as their boat heeled over under the impact of mountainous waves, the young Darnley Island woman dived from her father’s lugger to the rescue. As she reached the semi-conscious men her own boat quivered drunkenly from stem to stern and capsized. Supporting the two half-drowned white men on her back, she swam for seven hours through violent and seething seas, until exhausted and in a state of collapse she and the rescued men managed to scramble ashore at a little beach on the Queensland coast.

Her courageous and daring feat attract ed considerable attention, and she was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Humane Society of England, being the first native woman to receive such a cov eted honour.