‘We were the frontline’: Australia’s only all-Indigenous battalion remembered as last Torres Strait digger dies

Mebai Warusam (left) and Awati Mau at the unveiling of a statue commemorating the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion in 2018. Photograph: Aaron Smith/The Guardian

The last surviving member of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion (TSLIB), the only all-Indigenous battalion to serve for the Australian Defence Force, has been laid to rest.

Mebai Warusam, 99, was buried on his home island of Saibai in the Torres Strait on 5 August, only weeks after the second last survivor, Awati Mau, 96, was buried in his community at the tip of Cape York.