It contains hundreds of graves, including between 600 and 700 Japanese (mostly pearl-shell divers), entrepreneurs and fortune hunters of all nationalities, Torres Strait pilots, sailors and ships' passengers drowned at sea, as well as generations of Thursday Islanders.

[1] Thursday Island (Indigenous name: Wai-ben) is located within the Prince of Wales (Muralag) group, just off the northwest tip of Cape York Peninsula.

[1] The original inhabitants of the Muralag islands, the Kaurareg people, shared some cultural characteristics with Cape York Aborigines and spoke the same basic Australian language, Kalaw Lagaw Ya.

[1] During the first half of the 19th century British shipping began to make regular use of Torres Strait, entering into a passing trade with the Islanders.

Colonial occupation commenced in the 1860s and 1870s with the arrival of beche-de-mer crews, pearl-shellers, Protestant missionaries from the southwestern Pacific, and government officials.

[1] The official Queensland Government settlement at Somerset on Cape York was established in 1864, but was moved in 1877 to the newly surveyed town of Port Kennedy on the southern side of Thursday Island.

[1] In 1879, at British Colonial Office direction, Queensland jurisdiction was extended to the islands of the northern half of the Torres Strait.

At this period about 800 or 900 tons of shell were exported annually to New South Wales, Britain and other places, and the Queensland Government was collecting substantial revenue from licenses.

[1] A local census taken c. 1885 identified over 300 persons resident on Thursday Island, comprising "whites" (approximately 45%), Malays, Manilla, Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, Arabs, and "natives".

In February 1888 the Trustees formed regulations and by-laws for the effective operation of the cemetery, and in mid-1888 paid nearly £100 for the construction of wire fencing on the reserve.

This included more level, less rocky land, and also provided access along the foreshore road to the hospital on Point Vivien, in the southwest corner of the island.

[1] In 1979, the Monument Building Committee of Japan erected a memorial/shrine in the Thursday Island Cemetery, to honour the hundreds of Japanese who worked, lived and died in the Torres Strait between 1878 and 1941.

[1] With the expansion of the Torres Strait pearl-shell industry in the early years of the 20th century the town of Thursday Island (formerly Port Kennedy) also grew, and a further extension to the Thursday Island Cemetery was made on 9 January 1913, with the addition of about 5 acres of mostly flat, less rocky land along Aplin Road to the west, bringing the area of the reserve to 31 acres 2 roods 9 perches.

(Prior to 1973, all non-Christian interments were recorded as "pagan", despite the large number of other religions represented on the island including Shinto, Buddhism and Islam.)

Despite the establishment of municipal government on Thursday Island as early as 1912, the cemetery remained the responsibility of community trustees for over a century.

[1] The grave furnishings in the cemetery are diverse in design and materials – the latter including timber, polished granite, marble, sandstone, early cast iron, and later concrete and tiles.

Early headstones in the cemetery were imported from well known monumental masons in southern centres, mostly from Melrose and Fenwick (Townsville), but also from firms such as John Petrie and J Clements of Brisbane.

Designs include columns, obelisks, desks and upright slabs, generally with the more elaborate decoration found on early Catholic graves.

Little early documentation survives, parts of the site are inaccessible, and much of the remainder is so overgrown that the identification of graves, iron markers and headstones is difficult.

A conservation plan for the Thursday Island Cemetery, completed in May 2000, identified 21 distinct groupings of graves (Areas A–T), but there were sections of the reserve which were inaccessible at time of survey, and unable to be recorded.

[1] From what can be discerned, the original layout of Thursday Island Cemetery reflects the social structure and hierarchical patterns established on Thursday Island in the late 19th century, with the most influential social groups located at the top of the hill near Summers Street, and the least influential located near Aplin Road on the flats.

On this section, at the top of the hill adjacent to Summers Street and overlooking Ellis Channel (Area L), are the graves of some of Thursday Island's early European "elite", including the Hon.

[1] On the southern and western slopes of this hill, closer to Summers Street, is the original Protestant section (most likely mainly Anglican), which includes the earliest metal cemetery plot marker (Area M).

The conservation plan records evidence of a track leading west around the hill and providing access to graves in the area, which is now overgrown and inaccessible.

[1] On the steep slopes east of the cemetery access track, still in the southern part of the reserve but north of the Protestant section near Summers Street, are a large number of overgrown graves, mostly of Japanese origin (Area K).

[1] Graves in the central section of the cemetery, on flatter but still elevated and sloping land, and on both sides of the access road, are predominantly Christian, both European and Islander (Areas E–G, O–Q).

[1] Closer to the northern end of the cemetery reserve, on gently sloping land east of the access track, is a section of mainly early 1900s European graves (Area D).

[1] At the northeast end of the reserve, on the flat land beside Aplin Road, is the Japanese pearl-shell divers' burial ground (Area A).

The cemetery contains the graves of hundreds of people from many nationalities, cultures and religious backgrounds (including Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto and Islam).

John Douglas (1828–1904), whose grave is located at the top of the highest hill in the cemetery, overlooking Ellis Channel and the islands of the southern Torres Strait.