Bathurst Island ( Iwaidja: ''Nguyu'') (, ) is one of the

Tiwi Islands The Tiwi Islands ( tiw, Ratuati Irara meaning "two islands") are part of the Northern Territory, Australia, to the north of Darwin adjoining the Timor Sea. They comprise Melville Island, Bathurst Island, and nine smaller uninhabited islands, wi ...

in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Au ...

off the northern coast of Australia 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 Darwin may refer to: Common meanings * Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection * Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...

. 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, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the T ...

have occupied the area that became the Tiwi Islands for at least 40,000 years. On 5 May 1623, Willem Jootszoon Van Colster (or Coolsteerdt), in the ship ''Arnhem'' named the island De Speult Eylandt, in honour of Herman van Speult, Governor of

Ambon Ambon may refer to: Places * Ambon Island, an island in Indonesia ** Ambon, Maluku, a city on Ambon Island, the capital of Maluku province ** Governorate of Ambon, a colony of the Dutch East India Company from 1605 to 1796 * Ambon, Morbihan, a co ...

, 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 Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna J ...

'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 Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, (22 May 176227 July 1834) was a High Tory, High Church Pittite. He was an MP for thirty years before ennoblement. A personal friend of William Pitt the Younger, he became a broker of deals across cabinet fa ...

, (1762-1834), former British Secretary of State for the Colonies. From 1910 to 1938 the island was the site of the

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

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 An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th ce ...

, 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 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 cellulose, and can contain minor p ...

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 The Bombing of Darwin, also known as the Battle of Darwin, on 19 February 1942 was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. On that day, 242 Japanese aircraft, in two separate raids, attacked the town, ships in ...

, a Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest, Ed Bennett, saw the approaching Japanese

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...

s, and urged the resident coastwatcher, John Gribble, to send a warning to

, but Gribble refused. He said it would have to be sent in code, 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 divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, al ...

due to bad weather, and the Australian duty officer assumed this was the same formation, and the warning was not acted upon.

In film

Bathurst Island was depicted as Mission Island in the 2008

Baz Luhrmann Mark Anthony Luhrmann (born 17 September 1962), known professionally as Baz Luhrmann, is an Australian film director, producer, writer and actor. With projects spanning film, television, opera, theatre, music and recording industries, he is re ...

film '' Australia''. 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, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Notable people

Olive May Pearce Olive May Pearce, also known as Sister Eucharia (14 December 1914 – 5 October 1999)Obituary in the Northern Territory News, 9 November 1999 was an Australian nun best known for her work with Aboriginal children and leprosy patients. She ...

Notes and references

External links