Quetta Memorial Precinct

About

The Quetta Memorial Precinct is a heritage-listed Anglican church precinct in Douglas Street, Thursday Island, Shire of Torres, Queensland, Australia. The precinct comprises the All Souls and St Bartholomew's Cathedral Church, the Bishop's House, and the Church Hall. The precinct was built as a memorial to the 134 lives lost in the shipwreck of the RMS Quetta on 28 February 1890. The church was designed in 1892–1893 by architect John H. Buckeridge. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 July 2001.

The Quetta Memorial Precinct on Thursday Island was established in the early 1890s. The principal buildings on the site are:

- The Bishop's House ( Bishop's College ), erected in 1891 as the residence for the first rector of the Church of England parish of Thursday Island, and which in 1900 became the residence of the first Bishop of the Church of England Diocese of Carpentaria

- All Souls and St Bartholomew's Cathedral Church and Quetta Memorial, erected in stages between 1893 and 1964/65

- the Church Hall, erected in 1902–03 as the Parish Institute

- the Rectory, erected in 1904. Thursday Island (indigenous name: Waiben) is located within the Prince of Wales (Muralag) group, just off the northwest tip of Cape York Peninsula. The original inhabitants of the Muralag islands, the Kaurareg people, shared some cultural characteristics with Cape York Aborigines and spoke the same basic language, Kala Lagaw Ya. However, the Kaurareg were a maritime people who lived from harvesting the sea, shifting camp sites regularly. Waiben had a restricted water supply, and it is thought that no permanent Kaurareg settlement was established there.

During the first half of the 19th century, British shipping began to make regular use of Torres Strait, entering into a passing trade with the Islanders. Colonial occupation commenced in the 1860s and 1870s with the arrival of beche-de-mer crews, pearl-shellers, Protestant missionaries from the southwestern Pacific, and government officials.

Queensland had no jurisdiction over the Torres Strait until its annexation in 1872 of the islands of the southern half of the Strait, a measure intended largely to protect Queensland interests in the pearl-shelling and beche-de-mer fisheries in the Strait and along the Barrier Reef, and to regulate the employment of South Sea Islanders in these enterprises. At annexation, Torres Strait Islanders acquired the same official status as mainland Aborigines.

In 1877, the official Queensland Government settlement at Somerset on Cape York Peninsula (established 1864) was moved to the newly surveyed town of Port Kennedy on the southern side of Thursday Island. The new location provided a sheltered, deepwater anchorage, and was more centrally located along the main shipping route through the inner channel of Torres Strait, the principal trade route to Asia and the northern route to England. In 1879, at British Colonial Office direction, Queensland jurisdiction was extended to the islands of the northern half of the Torres Strait.

The first Christian missionaries to establish a presence in the Torres Strait were associated with the London Missionary Society. From 1871, as the first step in bringing Christianity to Papual New Guinea, the society began to land its Pacific Islander teachers (mostly from the Loyalty Islands ) in the Torres Strait, at Erub ( Darnley Island ), Tutu (Warrior Island) and Dauan (Cornwallis) islands in July 1871, and at Mabuiag (Jervis)), Moa (Banks), Massid ( Yorke ) and Saibai islands in 1872. These lay teachers brought an indigenised form of Protestantism to the Torres Strait, reinforced the status of the Strait's Pacific Islander maritime workers, and paved the way for European missionaries. From 1871 to the mid-1880s, Congregational missionary the Rev. Dr Samuel MacFarlane headed the western division of the London Missionary Society's New Guinea mission. He was based initially at Erub, then moved to Dauan, where he established a school for island boys.

Torres Strait Islanders now refer to the arrival of the Christian missionaries in the Torres Strait in July 1871 as "the coming of the light", a cause for celebration and memorial:

"For generations of Islanders the arrival of the missionaries has marked the divide between darkness and light. They brought deliverance from a life most preferred to forget, certain aspects of which had become anathema to their religion, and to their idea of themselves as a civilised people.... Just lately the Islanders have begun to look back on bipotaim (time prior to the coming of the missionaries in 1871) more favourably, and while they remain devoutly Christian, a growing number now seek in elements of the pre-colonial culture the means to reaffirm their identity as Torres Strait Islanders and so strengthen their sense of community."

By the mid-1880s, nearly the whole of the Torres Strait Islander population was nominally Christian. French Catholic missionaries established a presence on Thursday Island in 1884–85, but Protestantism was well-established in the Torres Strait by this date.

In 1878, shortly after the establishment of permanent settlement on Thursday Island in 1877, the Church of England Diocese of North Queensland separated from the Diocese of Sydney, with the Right Rev. George Henry Stanton consecrated as the first bishop. The new diocese constituted a vast area of about 300,000 square miles, bounded on the west by the Queensland– South Australian border, on the south by latitude 22°S, on the east by the ocean, and encompassing the islands of the Torres Strait.

Anglican services on Thursday Island were held initially at the Court House, conducted by lay preachers and occasional visiting clergy. In 1885–1886 a substantial block of land in the main street, bounded by Douglas (formerly Tully), Jardine and Chester Streets, and adjacent to the Catholic missionaries, was vested in the Synod of the Diocese of North Queensland for church purposes. In April 1887, the first Anglican church committee on Thursday Island met to arrange for regular visits from a Church of England curate, and in June a church building fund was established. Little more was accomplished, however, until a tragic shipwreck in the Torres Strait in 1890 proved a catalyst for the construction of an Anglican church on Thursday Island.

On the night of 28 February 1890, the British mail and passenger ship RMS Quetta struck an uncharted rock in the Adolphus Channel, off Albany Island, and sank with the loss of 133 lives. It remains one of Queensland's and Australia's worst maritime disasters. The ship was en route to Britain, and carried nearly 300 passengers, many of them from prominent Queensland families. Most of the Europeans on board were drowned, and the loss was felt throughout colonial Queensland.

Shortly after the accident a visiting Anglican priest, the Rev. AA Maclaren, conducted a burial service over the site of the wreck of the Quetta. At a meeting of the Thursday Island Church of England Committee on 10 April 1890, Rev. Maclaren proposed that members of the Anglican Church be invited to subscribe to the erection of a church on Thursday Island, as a memorial to those lost in the Quetta. The idea was put to a general meeting of Thursday Island's Anglican congregation, held at the courthouse on 20 July 1890 and chaired by Bishop Stanton, where it was resolved:

That in the opinion of this meeting, it is desirable that a Church and Parsonage be erected on Thursday Island; the Church to be a fitting memorial of those who were lost in the wreck of the "Quetta" on the night of February the 28th last, and that the Church Committee take the necessary steps for carrying this into effect.

Some discussion ensued as to whether the memorial should be a Union Church, but only an Anglican church could be erected on Church of England property.

The first step was to attract a resident minister. In 1891 a rectory was built from locally raised subscriptions. Situated on the high ground of the Church of England property, at the northeast end of the site, the rectory was highset on timber stumps, of exposed timber stud-framing, lined with deep chamferboards, and surrounded by verandahs. It had a centrally positioned front door, and french doors with fanlights opening onto the front verandah. Once the rectory was completed, Rev. William Maitland Woods was installed as the first incumbent clergyman of the parish of Thursday Island, and canvassing began for funds for construction of a Memorial Church – a durable edifice, of artistic proportions, worthy of its commemorative intentions. Nearly £ 1600 was subscribed at this first appeal, from all over Australia and from Britain, and not restricted to Anglicans. Thursday Island's Presbyterians were particularly supportive of the project.