Waiben (Thursday Island)
The administrative and commercial centre of the Torres Strait Islands, the 3.5-square-kilometre Thursday Island (colloquially, TI; Kaurareg: Waiben or Waibene) is located approximately 35 kilometres north of Australia's northern extremity at the tip of Cape York Peninsula. The name simultaneously applies to the island as a whole, the town formerly known as Port Kennedy on its southwest corner — the township of Rose Hill (formerly Abednego) occupies the island's northeastern tip — and a locality within the Shire of Torres, The island also serves as the shire's administrative centre and the administrative and commercial centre the Torres Strait Island Region. However, it is not part of that Local Government Area.
After thousands of years as Waiben to the Kalaw Lagaw Ya-speaking Kaurareg, the island appeared as Friday Island on the charts, resulting from Owen Stanley's 1848 hydrographic survey of the area, with Thursday and Wednesday applied to neighbouring islands. That cartographic arrangement applied until June 1855, when Admiralty Hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort switched the names around, likely to present an east-west sequence.
