Sport and the Torres Strait: Thursday Island, Island Studies, the Archipelagic Turn, and Identity

Abstract

From the late 1950s onward, sport contributed to racial integration on Thursday Island, the administrative and commercial capital of the Torres Strait in northern Australia. Following their exclusion from the capital prior to, during, and immediately after the Second World War, Islanders began to move to Thursday Island in this period. As a homogenizing force, sport also helped to build a new local identity by connecting Thursday Island not only with the outer islands but also with close regional neighbours in Cape York Indigenous communities and in New Guinea. Empirically, this paper draws on archival documents, newspaper reports and oral history interviews. Conceptually, it is guided by the field of island studies, which emphasizes the uniqueness and significance of islands historically, culturally and in other spheres, and by the archipelagic turn in island studies that theorizes island interconnectivity.