Wadeye ( ) is a town in Australia's

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 was formerly known (and is still often referred to) as Port Keats. At the , Wadeye had a population of 2,280. Wadeye is the 6th most populous town, and the largest

Indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

community in the Northern Territory.

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 Islands ...

who inhabited the area long before white settlement include seven language groups, with the main language spoken being

Murrinh-patha The Murrinh-Patha, or Murinbata, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language Murrinh-Patha language, Murrinh-Patha is spoken by about 2500 people, and serves as a lingua franca for several other ethnic groups, such ...

. The township was originally founded as a Roman Catholic mission station by Father Richard Docherty in 1935 at Werntek Nganayi (Old Mission), and subsequently moved inland to the community's present location. Due to the opportunities that the mission provided for the people in the area, and the limited space and facilities at the mission, Father Docherty had to turn some people away until the mission's facilities and gardens could provide for large numbers of people. The mission was populated by people from seven different language groups and more than 20 clans. The

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

took over at some point and managed the mission as 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 ...

until the late 1970s. In 1978, local government was handed to the Kardu Numida Council and the community was renamed Wadeye. In 2022, mass unrest started over the death of a 32-year-old man on April 19, after he was allegedly attacked by an 18-year-old man. The teen was charged with manslaughter. Violence escalated between the 22 clan groups over the incident that resulted in a man reportedly being killed with a spear in the head, a total of 37 homes being extensively damaged by fire in

arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...

attacks and 125 of Wadeye's 288 properties needing repairs according to the Northern Territory government. All told, 545 residents have been forced from their homes since tensions escalated in April with violence still ongoing. In June 2022, total of sixteen eight bows and six crossbows were stolen in Darwin and used in Wadeye to injure at least four men.

Location and access

The town is remote, situated on the western edge of the Daly River Reserve about by air south-west of Darwin. The

Fitzmaurice River The Fitzmaurice River is a river in Australia's Northern Territory. Course The river drains into the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in the Timor Sea from a source just north of the Wombungi homestead. The river flows in a westerly direction between th ...

more or less forms its southern boundary. It lies close to the

Hyland Bay and Moyle Floodplain The Hyland Bay and Moyle Floodplain comprises the floodplain of the lower reaches of the Moyle and Little Moyle Rivers, and the adjoining mudflats of Hyland Bay, on the west coast of the Top End of the Northern Territory of Australia. The sit ...

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

, identified as such by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

because of its importance for large numbers of

waterbird A water bird, alternatively waterbird or aquatic bird, is a bird that lives on or around water. In some definitions, the term ''water bird'' is especially applied to birds in freshwater ecosystems, although others make no distinction from seabi ...

s.BirdLife International. (2011). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Hyland Bay and Moyle Floodplain. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2011-12-23. Wadeye has a sealed airstrip,

Port Keats Airfield Port Keats Airfield is an airport at Wadeye, Northern Territory (Port Keats) in Australia. World War II During World War II, the airfield was used as an emergency landing ground for Royal Australian Air Force fighters and bombers returning fro ...

, with regular passenger flights to Darwin. Road access is mostly unsealed via the Port Keats/ Daly River Road. Wadeye is only accessible by road during the dry season as the

wet season The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the sea ...

renders many river crossings impassable, and access is only possible by light aircraft or coastal barge.

Facilities

Wadeye is serviced by several organisations including government and non-government organisations. There is a Catholic school operated by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart that provides education to students from transition through to year 12. In 2020, despite the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, seven students completed high school in Wadeye. It was the first time since 2007 that anyone had completed the final year. There is a clinic operated by the

Northern Territory Government The Government of the Northern Territory of Australia, also referred to as the Northern Territory Government, is the Australian territorial democratic administrative authority of the Northern Territory. The Government of Northern Territory wa ...

that provides primary health care and emergency care services for the community. Clients requiring care that is not able to be managed in the community are transferred to

Royal Darwin Hospital Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) is a 360-bed Australian teaching hospital located in Tiwi, Northern Territory, a northern suburb of the Territory capital Darwin. It is part of the Top End Health Service, which covers an area of . RDH is the only t ...

via the Top End Medical Retrieval Service operated by CareFlight. The development corporation for the community is Thammarurr Development Corporation (TDC), which represents the local 21 clan groups, providing funding, governance and leadership around issues surrounding community development related to health, housing, education and country. There is a well stocked shop and a take-away operated by the TDC. Wadeye is also the site of a temporary ADF Radar site that is used during exercises conducted in the

Top End The Top End of Australia's Northern Territory is a geographical region encompassing the northernmost section of the Northern Territory, which aside from the Cape York Peninsula is the northernmost part of the Australian continent. It covers a ra ...

Art and culture

Nym Bunduk was the first painter in Wadeye who had international interest. He was asked by

Bill Stanner William Edward Hanley Stanner CMG (24 November 19058 October 1981), often cited as W.E.H. Stanner, was an Australian anthropologist who worked extensively with Indigenous Australians. Stanner had a varied career that also included journalism in ...

, an anthropologist who had come with Richard Docherty in 1935, to produce pieces explaining traditional law, which he made after he saw a map produced by Stanner. He produced many bark paintings of the dreaming which informed Stanner's research. In the 1958

George Chaloupka George Jiří Chaloupka Order of Australia, OAM, Australian Academy of the Humanities, FAHA (6 September 1932 – 18 October 2011) was an expert on Indigenous Australian rock art. He identified and documented thousands of rock art sites, and ...

commissioned 64 paintings by local artists including Nym Bunduk, Charlie Mardigan and Charlie Brinken. By the 1960s the Catholic Mission was buying artworks from local artists at the mission store. Bark painting soon became a small mission-run cottage industry. Today in Wadeye Mark Crocomb follows in the footsteps of Stanner collecting history and languages before they are lost. Following in the tradition of Nym Bundak is Richard 'Skunky' Parmbuk. He is one of many artists filling the space left by Nym in Wadeye.

Climate

As any other regions in the

, Wadeye 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 of p ...

(''Aw'') with distinct wet and dry seasons. The dry season normally occurs from about May to October. The temperature of the dry season can drop below during the coolest months between May and August, and it can peak above in the build up months between September to November. The wet season is generally associated with monsoon rains and

tropical cyclones A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

. Most of the rainfall occurs from December to March (southern hemisphere summer), when thunderstorms are not very uncommon and afternoon relative humidity averages over 70 percent during the wettest months.

References

{{authority control Towns in the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory Australian Aboriginal missions