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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, w ...
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 Aust ...
off the northern coast of
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
along with Melville Island. __TOC__


Description

The largest settlement on Bathurst is
Wurrumiyanga Wurrumiyanga (), formerly Nguiu (, ), is a community on the southern coast of Bathurst Island, Northern Territory, Australia. Nguiu was founded in 1911 as a Catholic mission by Francis Xavier Gsell. In 2010 Nguiu was renamed 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 Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait ...
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, who had commissioned the voyage of exploration. In 1828, the island was named Bathurst Island by Scottish explorer
John Clements Wickham John Clements Wickham (21 November 17986 January 1864) was a Scottish explorer, naval officer, magistrate and administrator. He was first lieutenant on during its second survey mission, 1831–1836, under captain Robert FitzRoy. The young ...
, 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 ...
'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 naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
'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 fac ...
, (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 let ...
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 c ...
, 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 pe ...
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 torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an air ...
s, and urged the resident
coastwatcher The Coastwatchers, also known as the Coast Watch Organisation, Combined Field Intelligence Service or Section C, Allied Intelligence Bureau, were Allied military intelligence operatives stationed on remote Pacific islands during World War II ...
, 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 divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, ...
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 Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
''. 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


Notes and references


Further reading

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


External links


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