The Torres Strait was the escape from the treacherous coral graveyard of the Great Barrier Reef, but an escape that claimed many a Dutch merchant ship and Spanish Gold galleon. Indonesian/Chinese bêche-de-mer fishing fleets and Japanese Pearl divers helped to make these waters the most exotic in the world. At the same time in the late 19th century the gold miners flooded in to the Palmer and the Hodgkinson fields in Cape York and the tragic story of the mission stations for the Aborigines followed. The tranquillity of rainforest and coral cay was lost forever as adventurers, eccentrics, plantation growers and South Pacific seafarers poured into Cooktown, Cairns, Kuranda and Innisfail. Strange tales and heroic struggles.