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Coming of the Light Festival

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A picture of a small white church with spires, nestled next to palm trees and bushes.
All Saints Anglican Church on Erub (Darnley Island) in the Torres Strait.

The Coming of the Light Festival is celebrated in the Torres Strait Islands on 1 July each year. It commemorates the arrival of the London Missionary Society in Torres Strait at Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, introducing Christianity to the region. The predominantly Christian Torres Strait Islanders hold religious and cultural ceremonies across Torres Strait and mainland Australia to celebrate the day.[1][2][3]

Origins

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In 1871 representatives of the London Missionary Society (LMS) arrived in the Torres Straits on the schooner Surprise,[4][5][a] which had been chartered by the LMS,[6][7] after the French Government had demanded their removal from the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia in 1869. They decided to expand into the Torres Straits and New Guinea.[8] They were represented by two Englishmen, Revs S. Macfarlane and Archibald Wright Murray,[9][10] and eight Lifu (Loyalty Islander) evangelists: Tapeso, Elia, Mataika, Guchong, Kerisidui, Wauaded, Sevine and Josaia, and their wives.[8][11]

The missionaries reached Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, an event that came to be known as the "Coming of the Light". Dabad, one of the tribal elders of the island, met them at Kemus Beach. Dabad befriended the missionaries and introduced them to Amani, another tribal elder, and the rest of the Erub Islanders. His role in the bringing of Christianity to the Torres Straits is memorialised by Dabad's Monument at Badog.[8][12]

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ For further information about Surprise, see Torres_Strait_Islanders#Coming_of_the_Light.

References

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  1. ^ "The Coming of the Light Festival". Torres Strait Regional Authority. Archived from the original on 2 November 2007.
  2. ^ Celebrations and holidays; Torress Strait Island Regional Council
  3. ^ Torres Strait Islands: Coming of the Light festival; Australian Geographic, July 21, 2015
  4. ^ "Cruise of the Jeannie Oswald". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 7, 914. Victoria, Australia. 21 October 1871. p. 6. Retrieved 4 August 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ "The New Guinea Expedition". The Herald (Melbourne). No. 8118. Victoria, Australia. 13 January 1872. p. 3. Retrieved 4 August 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ "Missionary Ships". Shipping Wonders of the World (Part 51). 26 January 1937. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  7. ^ "The Coming of the Light". Anglican Board of Mission. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  8. ^ a b c "All Saints Anglican Church (entry 600873)". Queensland Heritage Register. Queensland Heritage Council. Dated |20 January 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2021. Text may have been copied from this source, which is available under a Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
  9. ^ Gibbney, H. J. (1974). "Samuel Macfarlane". Australian Dictionary of Biography . Retrieved 3 August 2021. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, (MUP), 1974
  10. ^ Hammond, Philip (30 June 2011). "Performers mark Coming of the Light". The Courier Mail. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  11. ^ Murray, Archibald Wright (1888). "The Bible in the Pacific". James Nisbet and Company. pp. 226–228. Retrieved 4 August 2021 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ "Dabad's Monument". Monument Australia. Retrieved 14 July 2016.
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