The full significance of Harry Mosby’s silver-medal win in the men’s discus at the 1976 Paralympic Games in Canada was unrecognised for 45 years: Paralympics Australia thought he was a Western Australian.
In truth, Mosby was a Torres Strait Islander from Masig (Yorke Island), one of around 600 Islander men who worked to support his family on the Australian mainland during “railway time” from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
Until 1965, the Queensland Torres Strait Islander Act controlled resident Islanders’ lives, including their wages and movements.
