Maria Island, in the

Marra language Marra, sometimes formerly spelt Mara, is an Australian Aboriginal language, traditionally spoken on an area of the Gulf of Carpentaria coast in the Northern Territory around the Roper, Towns and Limmen Bight Rivers. Marra is now an endanger ...

known as ''Gurrululinya,'' is located in the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria (, ) is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea (the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea). The northern boundary is ...

, and comes under the jurisdiction of the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

. It is sacred to local indigenous Australian people, an important ecological niche for various species of wildlife, and the object of interest to mining companies. The first Europeans to sight the island were the Dutch, who mapped it as a cape, and its status as an island was only thereafter determined when

Matthew Flinders Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to u ...

sailed around it in late December 1802.

Description

Maria Island lies 20 miles offshore of the southwestern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in

Limmen Bight Limmen Bight is a bight, or large, open bay, located in the Northern Territory of Australia at the western end of the Gulf of Carpentaria about east of the town of Katherine. It is part of the traditional lands and waters of the Marra peopl ...

. It, and the wetlands, and seas in its vicinity, rich in

seagrass Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families (Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and Cymodoceaceae), all in the orde ...

es are an important nesting and feeding site for three species of turtle, and contains substantial colonies of silver gulls. The interior is stocked with large numbers of the

northern brown bandicoot The northern brown bandicoot (''Isoodon macrourus''), a marsupial species, is a bandicoot found only on the northern and eastern coasts of Australia and nearby islands, mainly Papua New Guinea. It is not, however, found far inland. Description ...

while herds of dugong and dolphin pods frequent its waters. It is also an important feeding and breeding area also for critically endangered curlew sandpipers, great knot, and

freshwater sawfish The largetooth sawfish (''Pristis pristis'', syn. ''P. microdon'' and ''P. perotteti'') is a species of sawfish, family Pristidae. It is found worldwide in tropical and subtropical coastal regions, but also enters freshwater. It has declined dra ...

. Three species of turtle, among them the

olive ridley The olive ridley sea turtle (''Lepidochelys olivacea''), also known commonly as the Pacific ridley sea turtle, is a species of turtle in the family Cheloniidae. The species is the second-smallest and most abundant of all sea turtles found in th ...

and

flatback turtle The Australian flatback sea turtle (''Natator depressus'') is a species of sea turtle in the family Cheloniidae. The species is endemic to the sandy beaches and shallow coastal waters of the Australian continental shelf. This turtle gets its ...

, exploit the sand dunes on the edges of the island to lay their eggs.

Aboriginal traditions

16 sacred sites on the island Maria Island have been registered with the Northern Territor
Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority
According to one tradition, it is the resting-place of their Kangaroo Dreaming which lay down there after travelling through the desert. It is also regarded as the site of a poisonous

she-oak The Casuarinaceae are a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants placed in the order Fagales, consisting of four genera and 91 species of trees and shrubs native to eastern Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia, Malesia, Papuasia, and the Pacific Is ...

that may kill certain intruders.

Mining

In 2011, the Western Desert Resources Corporation, together with its partner Sherwin Iron, announced plans that it was planning to run a pipeline from its Roper Bar mining site to carry slurry to the island for treatment there before being offloaded into barges that would ferry the material to ships in deeper water for export to East Asian steel mills. The following year, in 2012 Maria Island was included in the

Limmen National Park Limmen National Park, announced in 2012, is the third largest national park in the Northern Territory, after Judbarra / Gregory National Park, with an area of approximately . Located about 600 km south-east of Darwin on the Gulf of Carpenta ...

established that year, though the agreement excised considerable portions of land for mining exploration. In 2014, the two companies collapsed in the wake of a slump in the iron ore market. Sometime afterwards the

Dubai Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...

company Al-Rawda Resources expressed interest in resurrecting the earlier project, by planning to establish a coastal facility on the area's

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

s where barges could load ore for shipment to container vessels 6 lying 6 kilometers north of Maria Island. The Marra community expressed concerns that the infrastructure, if established, would contaminate what is a pristine reserve.

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * {{coord, -14.874, 135.739, type:isle_region:AU-NT, display=title Islands of the Northern Territory Sacred islands