We are who we are because of our past, so let's seize the past with the help of Ted Egan who made this video of the Torres Strait where I lived and worked on TI in 1977 under the dick-tatorship of Cec Burgess.
Cec was a former missionary-type who, having discovered the difference between a debit and a credit, passed himself off as an accountant to become manager of what was then the Island Industries Board. Had it not been for Cec's reign of terror, I might have stayed forever, as, according to 'Banjo' Paterson's "Thirsty Island", 'the heat, the thirst, the beer, and the Islanders may be trusted to do the rest.'
Of course, professionally speaking, I would have signed my own death warrant because Thursday Island was a dead-end, whereas I went on to bigger and better jobs in the Solomons (again!), Samoa, Malaysia, Australia, New Guinea (again and again!), Saudi Arabia, Greece ...
It was a case of Thursday Island versus the World, and the world won!
