Booby Island (Queensland)


Booby Island is located northwest of Muttee Heads at the tip of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. This island is in the Torres Strait, west of Thursday Island and west of Prince of Wales Island. Booby Island is also known as Ngiangu by the Kuarareg people of the western Torres Strait, its traditional owners, named for the giant Ngiangu who was forced from a neighbouring island It has been called Booby Island by a number of European explorers, including Captain Cook, for the presence of the booby birds.

Shipwrecks

In the 19th century, such a high number of ships were lost in the area that provisions were stored on the island for shipwrecked sailors.
Wrecks include:
In 1890 a lighthouse eventually took up service on the island, an tall timber framed iron clad conical tower with a focal plane at 37 m. The light characteristic is one flash every 7.5 seconds. The tower is painted white with a red lantern room.

Heritage listings

Booby Island has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:
Booby Island is also home to Indigenous rock art and graffiti in a number of shoreline caves. The first known documentation of this was in 1857, by Lieutenant Chimmo of the HMSV Torch writing of the ship names in the 'Post Office Cave'. The island became a stopping point for water and repairs for sailors traversing the Torres Strait in trading ships, and government ships from the early days of European colonisation, and many left their marks both alongside and overwriting the Indigenous rock art. The recollections of lighthouse keepers and their families in newspaper articles and books never fail to mention the painted caves, and some of their names also appear amongst the graffiti.
The Indigenous rock art and graffiti was photographed by a Queensland Museum team in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequent studies have shown that there are marks left by: