Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Torres Strait Islands
Summary
The Torres Strait Islands are an archipelago of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land area is .
The Islands have been inhabited by the indigenous Torres Strait Islanders. Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island in 1770, but British administrative control only began in the Torres Strait Islands in 1862. The islands are now mostly part of Queensland, a constituent State of the Commonwealth of Australia, but are administered by the Torres Strait Regional Authority, a statutory authority of the Australian federal government. A few islands very close to the coast of mainland New Guinea belong to the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, most importantly Daru Island with the provincial capital, Daru.
Only 16 of the islands are inhabited. The Torres Strait Islands' population was recorded at 4,514 in the 2016 Australian census, with 91.8% of these identifying as Indigenous Torres Strait Island peoples. Although counted as Indigenous Australians, Torres Strait Islander peoples, being predominantly Melanesian, are ethnically and culturally different from Aboriginal Australians.
The Galician Explorer Luís Vaez de Torres sailed the Torres Strait in 1606. Torres had joined the expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, which sailed west from Peru across the Pacific Ocean in search of Terra Australis.
Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty in 1770 over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island, calling it New South Wales in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third.
British administrative control did not begin until 1862 in the Torres Strait Islands, marked by the appointment of John Jardine, police magistrate at Rockhampton, as Government Resident in the Torres Straits. He originally established a small settlement on Albany Island, but on 1 August 1864 he settled at Somerset Island.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.