Tiwi Islands: Tiwi touchdown

Football really is an art form on Bathurst Island

It's the last weekend in March and the sleepy tropical town of Nguiu on Bathurst Island is fairly thrumming with excitement as truckloads of people make their way to the footy oval in the middle of town for the most hotly anticipated day of the year - Grand Final Day. Colourful streamers in team colours flutter from every available pillar and post and houses all over the island empty as an eerie silence descends across the land. That is, silence everywhere except at the oval, where excitement levels reach fever pitch and the frenzied cheers as the game begins echo through the deserted streets.

Grand final day

Football is serious business in the Tiwi Islands. These two tiny islands 80km north of Darwin are home to 2700 people and eight AFL teams. For such a tiny population, the islanders' impact on Aussie Rules is phenomenal. Some of the most famous footballers originating from these tropical islands include Michael Long, Edmund Johnson, Maurice Rioli and David Kantilla. Grand Final Day is the chance to show off your skills on the field, lead your team to victory, and who knows, it may just be the start of a brilliant football career.

Melville and Bathurst Islands, known collectively as the Tiwi Islands, are just a short but beautiful 20-minute flight across the Timor Sea from Darwin. Together the two islands, which are separated by the 700-metre wide Aspley Strait, are 8000 square kilometres of monsoonal rainforest ringed by pristine beaches, scattered with tiny Aboriginal communities maintaining elements of a traditional existence mixed with modern-day influences. One of the most influential modern-day developments is football and it permeates all aspects of Tiwi life.

Much more than just a footy match, grand final day is a massive family gathering and includes the Tiwi Art Sale, a great chance to buy Tiwi art and crafts at community prices. The sale venue is the Tiwi Design art centre with additional arts and crafts from across the two islands also on sale there.

Footy and art

Tiwi art is the other touchstone of Tiwi culture, and just like football, there's no way you can escape it on the islands. As soon as you arrive on the island, the traditional art is all around you, from the brightly decorated murals that adorn the walls of the airport shelter and almost every building in town to the distinctive burial poles (often decorated in football team colours) on the outskirts of the main town, Nguiu.
One of the most important expressions of the traditional Tiwi culture, the burial poles, or Pukumani, are part of a religious ceremony that includes singing, dancing and the making of special carved poles called tutini as well as tungas and arm bands. These large poles are made from the trunk of the ironwood tree and are carved and decorated to celebrate the dead person's life and spiritual journey. The ceremony occurs approximately six months after the deceased has been buried and the Tiwi believe that the dead person's existence in the living world is not finished until the completion of the ceremony.

You don't have to be on the island for very long until it becomes clear that art here is about living culture, not just art for art's sake or art for the tourists. That said, art is also one of the main sources of income for many of the islanders who are prolific artists producing distinctive and valuable art, pottery, sculptures and wooden carvings. There are three main galleries on Bathurst Island, and all three are visited as part of a day tour that explores the history, culture and landscape of this fascinating corner of Australia.

Tiwi history

While the Tiwi Islands are now an Aboriginal Reserve, and all businesses on the island are Tiwi-owned, the first permanent European settlement on the islands was a British military fort established in 1824. Five years later the fierce, warrior-like Tiwis had persuaded the British to abandon it and it wasn't until Francis Xavier Gsell established the Roman Catholic Mission at Nguiu in 1911 that sustained European contact began. Fortunately for the Tiwis, Gsell's management of the mission was a reasonably benign one that managed to integrate Christian beliefs and traditional culture and the mission still plays an active part in the life of most islanders today.

The Tiwi Tours day trip begins with an introduction to the history of the island at the excellent (if a little dusty) Patakijiyali Museum in the old mission school, where the Tiwi guide also explains the significance of the Pukumani and other art forms that are so common on the islands and the complicated systems of kinship that rule Tiwi social life.

Tea at the community centre

After a visit to some of the art galleries and a chance to talk to the artists as they work, it's time for the highlight of the day, morning tea with some of the Tiwi women at the local community centre. Over a cup of billy tea with some freshly-baked damper and jam, you can sit down on the ground with the women and enjoy a good-old fashioned chinwag as they show you how they produce beautiful baskets, paintings, armbands and other weavings. Although part of the tour, the women are not tourist attractions, and like all of us, not inclined to chat unless you make the effort first. Brush up on your AFL knowledge before you go and you'll have an instant ice breaker.

After morning tea the women paint their faces in traditional motifs and colours and perform a smoking ceremony to cleanse your spirit and other traditional dances. 

After another art gallery visit it's off for a short walk in rainforest to a beautiful crystal clear swimming hole to cool off before a picnic lunch and then a bushtucker walk to a hilltop lookout with sweeping views over the coastline. There's a grave up here, surrounded by fading Pukumani poles. The young man buried here was a local football star, and if you look closely at the carvings and painted motifs on the poles you'll see lots of symbolic footballs and goal posts incorporated into the design, proving once and for all that footy really is a religion in these parts.

More information:

You'll need a permit to visit the Tiwi Islands. Tiwi Tours (in conjunction with Aussie Adventure Tours) run several different day trips to Bathurst and Melville Island and will organise the permits on your behalf. All tours include morning tea and lunch as well as return flights from Darwin. Tel: (08) 8923 6555 or visit Aussie Adventure.

Article by Lee Atkinson, December 2006.

All information was correct at the time of writing but may change without notice.