“…Subsequent studies revealed that JEV had probably reached the Torres Strait by island hopping, probably undetected in mosquito-bird and mosquito-pig cycles, through the eastern Indonesian archipelago to Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea (PNG) (Mackenzie et al, 2002b). In support of this hypothesis, JEV had been isolated from mosquitoes collected on Lombok (Olson et al, 1985) and Flores (JG Olson, unpublished results) Islands in 1978to 1979and 1981 antibodies to JEV were found in human sera collected between 1989 and 1995 from Western Province in PNG (Johansen et al, 1997); clinical cases of Japanese encephalitis were reported in Irian Jaya (Spicer, 1997) and PNG (J Oakley, S Flew, CA Johansen, RA Hall, D Phillips, JS Mackenzie, unpublished results) in 1997 to 1998; and JEV was isolated from mosquitoes in Western Province, PNG, in 1997(Johansen et al, 2000. JEV activity continued to occur in the Torres Strait in 1996Strait in , 1997Strait in , and 1998, with seroconversions in sentinel pigs, a further human case in 1998 on Badu, and, for the first time, in Cape York on the Australian mainland (Hanna et al, 1999), but no activity was detected in 1999.…”