Australian Dictionary of Biography

Uruba Demag (Demaga) Ware (c. 1857–1915), pioneer of Wag, was born on Mabuiag Island (Jervis Island), Torres Strait, in around 1857. Her father was Gayai (also known as Rusui) and her mother was either Mawat or Kamaiki. She had at least six siblings: Dagum, Wiwai, Buia, Pipit, Bai, and Abet. The dangal (dugong) was her totem.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the market for pearls was very good, many South Sea Islanders travelled to Mabuiag Island and settled there. Demag’s first husband, Ned Cutay Ware, was a South Sea Islander from Ouvéa Island. They had five children: Elia, Abiu (Aviu) Pigin Alfred, Charlotte, Kaylang, and Akan. After Ned died in 1894 at Mabuiag Island, she married his brother, Jack Ware (Atei Goba), and they had six children: Kosia, Gayai, Jack, Andai, Diat, and Tewitte.

In 1904 conflict arose between Jack Ware and a Torres Strait Islander from Mabuiag Island over Charlotte, Demag and Ned's daughter; the issue was personal in nature. As a result of this dispute, Demag and Jack Ware were told to leave Mabuiag Island with their children. They travelled by a cutter, Yardi, to Totalai, a mission settlement on the northern side of Mua (Moa Island), to meet with Anu Namai, a Mualaig Torres Strait Islander leader who was respected as a brother to Demag Ware within the customary kinship system. Anu Namai told the family about Wag, a makeshift gardening village on the eastern side of the island at the base of Moa Peak (Mount Augustus; known to locals as Baudar), the highest in the Torres Strait, where they could stay.

After settling at Wag, Abiu Ware and Samuel Kawane, who Abiu had made his brother, travelled to Waibe, also known as Waiben (Thursday Island), to tell the government resident of their settlement at Wag. What they wanted was government support in the form of a teacher who could provide basic instruction in English language, writing, and arithmetic. What they got was a reserve for ‘troublesome’ (Ware, pers. comm.) South Sea Islanders that stripped them of their rights. In 1908 the Queensland government formally gazetted five hundred acres as a reserve on the eastern side of Mua and, on 19 May that year, the Anglican Church established St Pauls Mission at Wag. The Ware family continues to regret this loss of autonomy: ‘we bow our heads to pray, close our eyes, when we open them, our lands are gone! True! True!’ (Ware, pers. comm.). Demag Ware died at St Pauls in 1915. Activist freedom fighter Elia Ware was her grandson. Descendants of the Ware and Kawane families still live at Wag village.

Rosie Ware is Uruba Demag Ware’s great granddaughter. She was born on Waiben, Torres Strait.