Kalaw Lagaw Ya

Kalaw Lagaw Ya is the culture of the western and central Torres Strait Islanders, Melanesian seafarers whose islands, including Badu and Mabuiag, lie in shallow waters between Cape York and the New Guinea coast. Their Pama-Nyungan language carries a deep Papuan substrate in vocabulary and custom, and before the colonial era it served as the lingua franca of the whole Torres Strait area.

Islanders combined yam and tobacco gardening with hunting dugong and turtle on the reefs and sustained long-distance trade with both the Papuan mainland and Aboriginal Australia, exchanging canoes, shells, feathers and dance.

The first European to enter their waters was the Spanish navigator Luís Vaez de Torres in 1606, after whom the strait is named; others followed in the eighteenth century, but the islanders remained independent masters of their sea lanes until well into the nineteenth century.