All Saints Anglican Church, Darnley Island, Anglican church building on Darnley Island, Australia.
All Saints Anglican Church stands on Darnley Island (Erub) in the Torres Strait Island Region, Queensland, and was built between 1919 and 1938. It is a heritage-listed church entered on the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. The island lies near Kemus Beach, where the London Missionary Society party landed on 1 July 1871.
The church was built between 1919 and 1938, decades after Christian missionaries first arrived in the Torres Strait Islands in 1871. This period reflects how the spread of faith took time to develop into permanent structures across the island communities.
The island's name for the 1871 missionary landing is the Coming of the Light, marked annually on 1 July. At Kemus Beach, elder Dabad met the London Missionary Society party and introduced them to elder Amani; Dabad's Monument at Badog records that he "denied his tribal laws and accepted the good news of salvation".
All Saints Anglican Church stands on Darnley Island (Erub), reached by boat or small aircraft from Thursday Island; the Queensland Government moved its Torres Strait administration from Somerset to Thursday Island in 1877. The church was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992, so check access arrangements with the island community before planning a visit.
The first recorded Christian service in the Torres Strait was held aboard the schooner Surprise on Sunday 2 July 1871, the day after the missionaries reached Erub. It was conducted in the Lifu language, and evangelists Mataika and Guchong with their wives were left on the island on 5 July.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,755 contributors worldwide.