Bathurst Island, Northern Territory
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Bathurst Island () (, ) is one of the
Tiwi Islands The Tiwi Islands ( meaning "two islands") are part of the Northern Territory, Australia, to the north of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin adjoining the Timor Sea. They comprise Melville Island, Northern Territory, Melville Island, Bathurst I ...
in the
Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...
off the northern coast of
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
along with Melville Island. __TOC__


Description

The largest settlement on Bathurst is Wurrumiyanga (known as Nguiu until 2010), in the south-east, with a population of around 1,560. Located on the south east corner of Bathurst Island, Wurrumiyanga is approximately north of Darwin. The second largest settlement is Wurakuwu, with a population of 50, located northwest of Wurrumiyanga. The third settlement on the island is a small family outstation called ''4 Mile Camp'', about west of Wurrumiyanga.


History

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia (co ...
have occupied the area that became the Tiwi Islands for at least 40,000 years. On 5 May 1623, Willem Joostzoon Van Colster (or Coolsteerdt), in the ship ''Arnhem'' named the island De Speult Eylandt, in honour of Herman van Speult, Governor of Ambon, who had commissioned the voyage of exploration. In 1828, the island was named Bathurst Island by Scottish explorer John Clements Wickham, after the explorer Phillip Parker King's ship which had explored the area in August 1821. He named the island during a voyage in March 1838 when he was second in command of HMS ''Beagle'' in
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's expedition. The ship's name honours Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, (1762-1834), former British Secretary of State for the Colonies. From 1910 to 1938 the island was the site of the
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
mission of Francis Xavier Gsell, known as the "Bishop with 150 wives" for his practice of "buying" girls betrothed to older men, thus making it possible for them to marry men of their own age. On 24 December 1912 the whole island was proclaimed an Aboriginal reserve, under the '' Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910''. A series of documents show that previous to the proclamation (published in the '' Commonwealth Gazette'' on 18 January 1913), there had been discussion about two parcels of land on the island. One was the allocation of allocated to the Mission, which would continue on annual leases, and the second regarding which was previously allocated as Crown Land under the ''Northern Territory Tropical Products Act 1904'', for the production of
cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
and other tropical crops. The correspondence shows that this was decided to be undesirable from the point of view of the Aboriginal people, both because of the bad influence of white men and the need to import labour to use on the leases. Before the bombing of Darwin, a Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest, Ed Bennett, saw the approaching Japanese
bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft that utilizes air-to-ground weaponry to drop bombs, launch aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploy air-launched cruise missiles. There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strateg ...
s, and urged the resident coastwatcher, John Gribble, to send a warning to Darwin, but Gribble refused. He said it would have to be sent in
code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...
, and he did not have the relevant code books. The first wave of 188 Japanese planes was also spotted by another missionary on the island, Father John McGrath, who sent a message on the radio saying "An unusually large air formation bearing down on us from the northwest". However, ten US P-40E Kittyhawk fighters were returning to Darwin after aborting a mission to
Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...
due to bad weather, and the Australian duty officer assumed this was the same formation, and the warning was not acted upon.


Climate

Bathurst Island has a
tropical savanna climate Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate is a tropical climate sub-type that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification categories ''Aw'' (for a dry "winter") and ''As'' (for a dry "summer"). The driest month has less than ...
(
Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (1951–2014), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author ...
: ''Aw'') with a very hot, rainy season from mid-October to April and a relatively cool, dry season from May to mid-October.


In film

Bathurst Island was depicted as Mission Island in the 2008 Baz Luhrmann film ''
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
''. In the film, Japanese infantrymen land on the island; however, the presence of Japanese troops on the island is entirely fictional, as no such landing by the Japanese was made during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
.


Notable people

* Olive May Pearce


Further reading

* *
Bathurst island
(Encyclopædia Britannica)
Bathurst Island
(Walkabout)


References


External links


Tiwi Land Council
{{Islands of the Northern Territory, state=collapsed Tiwi Islands Australian Aboriginal freehold title Islands of Western Australia