Badu people are an Indigenous Australian group of Torres Strait Island people based on the central-west Badu island.
The language traditionally spoken by the Badu people and their Mabuiag neighbours is Kala Lagaw Ya, [1] a member of the Pama-Nyungan language family. [2]
Badu, together with Moa Island to its West from which it is separated by a narrow channel, is one of the largest in the Torres Strait. Circular in form, roughly 6 kilometres in diameter it is surrounded by complex tides that can run up to 7 knots. Generally sparsely wooded, and rocky, the northern part of the island is fringed with dense mangroves. [3]
Badu Island in particular, with the publication of Ion Idriess's novel The Wild White Man of Badu (1950), gained a reputation as an island of headhunters, though the practice was widespread throughout the Torres Strait. Taking the head of one's enemy was a ritual practice, involving a cane hoop and a special bamboo knife (upi) for severing the head, then boiling it and dressing it with beeswax noses and eyes fashioned from nautilus nacre. [4]
Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken as early as 1605 sailed close to the island of Badu while en route back to the East Indies after a reconnaissance of New Guinea for the Dutch East India Company. The impression left of the region was of a waste land populated by cruel savages. [5] The island itself, together with Mabuiagm was later charted by William Bligh. [6]
Badu islanders murdered three Europeans from the Thomas Lord which had anchored off the island while searching for trepang in June 1846. [7] [8]
Badu people are an Indigenous Australian group of Torres Strait Island people based on the central-west Badu island.
The language traditionally spoken by the Badu people and their Mabuiag neighbours is Kala Lagaw Ya, [1] a member of the Pama-Nyungan language family. [2]
Badu, together with Moa Island to its West from which it is separated by a narrow channel, is one of the largest in the Torres Strait. Circular in form, roughly 6 kilometres in diameter it is surrounded by complex tides that can run up to 7 knots. Generally sparsely wooded, and rocky, the northern part of the island is fringed with dense mangroves. [3]
Badu Island in particular, with the publication of Ion Idriess's novel The Wild White Man of Badu (1950), gained a reputation as an island of headhunters, though the practice was widespread throughout the Torres Strait. Taking the head of one's enemy was a ritual practice, involving a cane hoop and a special bamboo knife (upi) for severing the head, then boiling it and dressing it with beeswax noses and eyes fashioned from nautilus nacre. [4]
Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken as early as 1605 sailed close to the island of Badu while en route back to the East Indies after a reconnaissance of New Guinea for the Dutch East India Company. The impression left of the region was of a waste land populated by cruel savages. [5] The island itself, together with Mabuiagm was later charted by William Bligh. [6]
Badu islanders murdered three Europeans from the Thomas Lord which had anchored off the island while searching for trepang in June 1846. [7] [8]