Map - Melville Island (Australia) (Melville Island)

Melville Island  (Melville Island)
Melville Island (Tiwi: Yermalner) is an island in the eastern Timor Sea, off the coast of the Northern Territory, Australia. Along with Bathurst Island and nine smaller uninhabited islands, it forms part of the group known as the Tiwi Islands, which are under the jurisdiction of the Northern Territory in association with the Tiwi Land Council as the regional authority.

Indigenous people have occupied the area that became the Tiwi Islands for at least 40,000 years. It is said that the first European to sight the island was Abel Tasman in 1644.

Explorer Phillip Parker King (son of governor of New South Wales Philip Gidley King) named it for Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, first Lord of the Admiralty, who is also commemorated by the much larger Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Shortly after this, the British made the first attempt to settle Australia's north coast, at the short-lived Fort Dundas on Melville Island. The settlement lasted from 1824 to 1828.

There was a Catholic mission on the island, on which Nova Peris' mother was raised after being taken from her mother.

During World War II the small Snake Bay Patrol manned by local Tiwi people was established as part of the military forces deployed to protect the island against any Japanese landings.

 
Map - Melville Island  (Melville Island)
Country - Australia
Flag 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 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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