Indigenous The Aboriginal Tiwi people have occupied the area that became the Tiwi Islands for at least 40,000 years, with creation stories relating their presence on the islands at least 7,000 years
before present. and the first historical record of contact between Indigenous islanders and European explorers was with the Dutch "under the command of Commander Maarten van Delft who took three ships, the
Nieuw Holland, the
Waijer, and the
Vosschenbosch, into Shark Bay on Melville Island and landed on 30 April 1705". Claims that the pre-colonial Tiwi Islands were raided by slave traders from
Portuguese Timor have been made since the early 19th century, sometimes in support of the unorthodox
theory of the Portuguese discovery of Australia. Early British sources cited Portuguese slave raids as a source of the supposed hostility of Tiwi Islanders to intruders, and recounted anecdotal evidence of Tiwi Islanders who spoke words of Portuguese. However, no direct evidence exists of these practices in Portuguese sources or in Tiwi oral tradition. There were other visits by European explorers and navigators in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including by Dutchman Pieter Pieterszoon, Frenchman
Nicholas Baudin and Briton
Philip Parker King. making contact with the Tiwi at St Asaph Bay, Melville Island, in 1818 King's was the first British expedition to interact with the Tiwi Islanders. Although the meeting of the two peoples was tense, iron tools were traded by the British for fish, water and
sago. King named Melville Island, Bathurst Island and Apsley Strait on this journey.
British colonial outpost In February 1824 Captain
Gordon Bremer was appointed by the
Admiralty, upon instruction from the
British Colonial Office, to take possession of Bathurst and Melville Islands, along with the
Cobourg Peninsula (now part of
Arnhem Land) on the mainland to the east, subject to the land being unoccupied by any people except "...the Natives of those or any of the other Eastern Islands". In September 1824, Bremer established a British military outpost, which was also the first British settlement in northern Australia, at
Fort Dundas on Melville Island, near present-day Pirlangimpi. Fifty
Royal marines were garrisoned at the fort and within a month hostilities resulted in an Islander being shot dead. Over the next four years the Tiwi speared the livestock, tore down British huts and killed three white men. Several marines also died of malaria and Fort Dundas was subsequently abandoned in 1828. in 1824 Despite the failure of the settlement, Bremer had claimed the northern area of the continent and adjacent islands as part of
New South Wales (then under Governor
Thomas Brisbane The Tiwi Islanders, however, were still regarded by the British as a fierce people and an 1888 police report stated an armed force of around twenty men would be required "to exterminate the inhabitants and gain possession of Melville Island". Within a few months, Cooper had been speared by the Tiwi but not mortally wounded. The harvesting of thousands of buffalo continued until 1896 when buffalo numbers reduced and the shooters also faced increased Tiwi resistance, resulting in Cooper and the others leaving the island. Cooper established his head-station at Paru and his riflemen (referred to as
Tarula or "lightning" by the Tiwi) subjugated the Tiwi by rape, murder and abduction. Cooper was able to maintain his brutal control until a government inquiry in 1914 forced him and his Iwaidja militia off the island. After earlier making his vows as a Missionary of the Sacred Heart, Bishop Francis Xavier Gsell had already become familiar with the wider region, having spent time in
New South Wales in the 1890s, followed by time in New Guinea. Before his relocation to the Tiwi Islands he had also been the
Northern Territory's Apostolic Administrator. The mission was established by Gsell on Bathurst Island at Nguiu (Wurrumiyanga) in 1911. Following growing concern around the erosion of the
Tiwi people's language and culture, a concerted revitalisation effort commenced in 1975, led by both clergy and lay Catholics. The Tiwi artwork in the Catholic church, and the translation of
Biblical stories into Tiwi, are both notable examples of this effort. Sister Tess Ward in particular, alongside local Tiwi women, worked to encourage the continued transmission of the Tiwi people's oral history and spent years recording Tiwi culture and language in written form. As part of the
Australian government's set of policies directed at
Aboriginal Australian people,
Nova Peris' mother, Joan, was raised in this mission after being taken from her mother; she was one of the
Stolen Generations. The mission has since taken on a more mediagenic role, serving as a key location in the 2019
Australian romantic comedy movie
Top End Wedding starring Aboriginal Australian actress
Miranda Tapsell.
Pearling industry High quality
pearling grounds were found offshore from the Tiwi Islands in the 1920s and 1930s, which attracted pearlers from mainland Australia and also from
Japan. The Japanese pearling fleets used Bathurst Island as an anchorage for their vessels right up until at least the 1950s.
Advances in infrastructure The Tiwi Islands' remoteness impeded much of the
development on the islands during the early 20th century. Significant improvements in infrastructure did not begin until 1930 when Patrick Ritchie (the first lay missionary on Bathurst Island) arrived in Nguiu. Ritchie oversaw construction of the first
road network on the islands, as well as
reservoirs and
stockyards. Ritchie's work was continued by
Queenslander Peter de Hayr, another lay missionary who spent 24 years in the Tiwi Islands (until his death in 1958). De Hayr was credited by Bishop Francis Xavier Gsell as being instrumental in the construction of many of the Tiwi Islands' most well-known landmarks including its timber church, presbytery, convent, and school. De Hayr also built the second iteration of the
St. Francis, part of the Nguiu mission's own
flotilla alongside the
Pius. The mission's vessels, which replaced the boat hired from
Darwin firm
Jolly and Co. for one pound a week, helped with Tiwi Islanders' transport needs until a large-scale commercial
ferry operator could be found to service the Darwin-Tiwis route.
World War II aircraft of
Hajime Toyoshima on Melville Island During
World War II, the Tiwi Islands found themselves in the centre of an increasingly aggressive confrontation between
Imperial Japan and Australia which reached a crescendo on February 19, 1942. On that day, having noticed a sortie overhead, Father John McGrath sent an urgent message from the radio hut located next to Nguiu's Catholic church. The message explained that aircraft had been spotted over the islands, heading south across the
Beagle Gulf towards Darwin. Officials ignored McGrath's warning and the Japanese airforce successfully managed to
bomb Darwin. As the Japanese squadrons returned from the raid, a Tiwi Islander named
Matthias Ulungura disarmed and captured Japanese pilot
Hajime Toyoshima, who had crash landed his damaged aircraft on Melville Island, the first Japanese military personnel to be taken captive on Australian soil. Later in the war, another Tiwi man named Louie captured a further five downed Japanese pilots. He requested a single bullet from the islands' limited stockpile of ammunition to kill the pilots but Father John McGrath refused the request, instead feeding the
POWs as per the
rules of war prior to the five Japanese being sent to the Australian mainland. The Tiwi Islands
local government area was established in 2001, when the previous community government councils in the three main communities of Wurrumiyanga (Bathurst Island),
Pirlangimpi and
Milikapiti (Melville Island) were amalgamated with the Wurankuwu Aboriginal Corporation to form a single local government. The Tiwi Islands Local Government was replaced in 2008 by the Tiwi Islands Shire Council as part of a Northern Territory-wide restructuring of local government. ==Politics and administration==