Horn Island -- known as Nurupai to the Kaurareg people -- serves as the air gateway to the Torres Strait. There is no airport on Thursday Island, so every visitor bound for the administrative center of the strait lands here first, then takes a bus to the wharf and a five-minute ferry across the channel. During World War II, this logistical importance made Horn Island a military target. The Japanese bombed the island repeatedly, and the entire civilian population was evacuated. The military base that replaced ordinary island life turned Horn Island into a staging point for the defense of Australia's northern approaches. When the war ended, residents returned to find their home transformed and scarred.

Among those who returned -- or rather, arrived for the first time -- were the Kaurareg, an Indigenous people whose traditional lands span more than a dozen islands around Prince of Wales Island in the Torres Strait. Displaced repeatedly since the 1860s, moved at gunpoint to Moa Island in 1922, the Kaurareg had spent decades being shuffled between places that were not their own. In 1947, elder Elikiam Tom insisted on returning to the region. When the Catholic Mission on Hammond Island denied him residence because he refused to convert, he crossed to Horn Island instead. Together with other Kaurareg elders from Moa, the returnees built Wasaga village. The Department of Native Affairs tried to relocate them again, this time to Red Island Point on the mainland. They refused. Wasaga stands today, and a large Kaurareg community remains on Horn Island.

Before the wars and the forced relocations, Horn Island drew British settlers during the 19th-century gold rush. That initial wave gave way to a more lasting prosperity built on the pearl-shell industry, which dominated the Torres Strait economy for decades. Today the island's economy is quieter. Tourism exists, but barely -- the museum at the Gateway Resort chronicles the island's wartime history, and the beach offers a pleasant walk, but most visitors pass through on their way to Thursday Island. The Wongai Beach Hotel, with its swimming pool and gardens tended by an avid-gardener owner, anchors what social life the island has. Its pub is the gathering place, the dining room, and -- if you arrive after eight -- the purveyor of last-resort bar snacks.

There are two places to stay, two ferries to Thursday Island, one cafe inside a supermarket, and a car rental desk that charges by the kilometer. The mobile signal is decent. The Wi-Fi costs extra. If you want to explore the outer Torres Strait Islands, Horn Island is the aviation hub -- Skytrans flights connect to remote communities, though you will need a permit from the Aboriginal Lands Council to visit many of them. For most travelers, Horn Island is a waypoint, a place where the plane lands and the ferry departs. But spending a day here rewards the curious. The wartime relics, the Kaurareg story of persistence, the unhurried pace of a place that has outlasted gold rushes, pearl booms, and aerial bombardment -- these are worth the stop, even if dinner is chips from behind the bar.