The Banks and Torres Islands: Vanuatu's Far North

The far north

Torba province covers the Banks group and, beyond it, the Torres Islands — the last land before Vanuatu gives way to the Solomon Islands. It is the most remote part of the country and the part least shaped by visitors.

Gaua carries Lake Letas, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the Pacific islands, with Mount Garet rising from its edge. Vanua Lava has waterfalls that reach the sea directly. Ureparapara is a drowned crater: a ship can sail into the caldera through the breached wall.

Getting there and moving around

Domestic flights serve Sola on Vanua Lava and the airstrip on Gaua. Onward movement is by small boat and depends on the sea state. Accommodation is village-based and arranged locally.

What the north is known for

Water music, performed by women standing waist-deep and striking the surface in rhythm, originates in this province. It is a living practice, and like most things in Vanuatu's kastom, participation is negotiated with the community.

Two groups, not one

Torba is a compound of Torres and Banks, and the two groups are genuinely distinct. The Banks Islands — Gaua, Vanua Lava, Mota, Mota Lava, Ureparapara, Merelava — sit closer to the rest of the country. The Torres Islands are a further 60 kilometres north-west and are the last Vanuatu land before Solomon Islands waters.

Population across the whole province is small, on the order of ten thousand people, and the provincial capital at Sola on Vanua Lava is a village by the standards of Port Vila.

Ureparapara

Ureparapara is the most photographed thing in the province and one of the more unusual harbours in the Pacific. The volcanic cone has had one wall breached by the sea, so a vessel sails through the gap and anchors inside the crater itself. The village of Lehali sits on the shore of what is, geologically, the inside of a volcano.

Lake Letas and Mount Garet

Gaua carries Lake Letas, among the largest freshwater lakes in the island Pacific, with the active cone of Mount Garet standing in it. The lake drains over the Siri waterfall, which falls around 120 metres. Walking to the lake and around to the falls is a multi-day undertaking with guides from the villages on the coast.

Water music

The province is the origin of etätung, water music: women standing waist-deep in the sea or a river and striking the surface with cupped and flattened hands to produce pitched, percussive rhythms. It is performed by women of the Leweton and Gaua communities and has been taken to festivals abroad, but it belongs here.

Practicalities

Sola and Gaua carry the airstrips that serve the province, with the Torres strip at Linua reached less often; which of them has a scheduled service in a given season has moved since 2024. Beyond the airstrips, movement is by open boat and depends entirely on sea state. Accommodation is village guesthouses and bungalows, arranged in advance by phone where there is signal and by message relayed where there is not.

How the province holds together

Torba is the least populous province in Vanuatu and the most dispersed. Governance runs through island councils and chiefs, not through a provincial machine, and the practical consequence for a visitor is that permission to walk, camp or photograph is asked for at the village, not obtained centrally.

Supply is the recurring problem. Fuel, building materials and rice arrive by ship on a schedule announced locally, and a delayed vessel is felt across the whole province at once. Islanders plan around this in a way that visitors usually have not.

Mota and the missionaries

The Mota language was adopted by the Melanesian Mission in the nineteenth century as its lingua franca across the whole region, and prayer books and school texts were printed in it for islands whose own languages the mission never learned. That decision made Mota briefly the most widely written language in the archipelago, and its traces still show in church vocabulary well beyond the Banks.