Yorke Island (Masig Island) is a coral cay situated in the Eastern area of the central island group in the Torres Strait, at the top end of the Great Barrier Reef and Northwest of the tip of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. It lies Northwest of Coconut/Poruma Islandin the central island group and Southwest of Stephens Island/Ugar Island, West of Darnley Island/Erub Island, and Northwest of Murray/Mer Island in the eastern island group.
This island is one of the Torres Strait Islands that are part of the state of Queensland, Australia.
Yorke Island, traditionally known as Masig, is about 2.7 km long and 800 m at its widest point. The inhabitants, skilled navigators with a detailed knowledge of the reefs, have always occupied a central position in the Straits trading networks.
In 1845, Masig people could be found trading from the west of the Straits to the east. Before the arrival of teachers from the London Missionary Society in the 1870s, Masig was attracting a diverse community of immigrants, some brought by the pearl and trochus shell industry.
The Queensland Government moved the people of Aureed to Masig after it was declared a government reserve. Luggers owned by Masig families continued to operate until the shell industry collapsed in the 1960s. The people then shifted successfully into commercial mackerel fishing, prawning and crayfishing. A highly profitable fish factory has operated on the island since the late 1970s, freezing the catch and airfreighting it to southern markets[1].
Since the grounding of the local commercial air service by CASA in 2007, access to Masig (2008) is by charter plane only. All goods and mail are delivered by a weekly barge service. Masig has a medical centre, staffed by a qualified nurse and there is also a doctor based there, who provides medical services to three other islands in the central island cluster (Coconut, Yam and Warraber). The island has a school, which is a campus of Tagai State College (based on Thursday Island). There is an IBIS store on the island and also a Mini-Mart.