Stories of Islanders in the railways Discover the stories of
Torres Strait Islanders to lived, worked and grew up around the
railway tracks of northern Australia. After the collapse of
Torres Strait marine industries in the 1960s, hundreds of young
Islander men made their way to the mainland in search of work.
Little did they know they would end up scattered across northern
Australia laying the veins of the mining industry: railway
tracks. Approximately 10 per cent of the Torres Strait
population left the islands to support their families from the
mainland. Their contribution to the development of Australia is
not often written about, and because of this, university
lecturer and railway child Leah Lui-Chivizhe has started a
project to research these stories and write a book. Leah is a
lecturer at the University of Sydney's Koori Centre, and her
research partner is Shino Konishi, an indigenous research fellow
at the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian
National University. The pair began work o