Warmer welcome for guests of Tiwi Islanders

By GREG ANSLEY

So these are the feared Tiwi Islanders. They must have mellowed over the years. Their greeting is vibrant with colour, movement and harmony and almost Polynesian in style, laughter rippling through both performers and audience.

It is hard to stand for any length of time without a small child engaging you in conversation in English, the rapid-fire local language, or a blend of the two.

Bathurst and Melville Islands, 80km into the Timor Sea north of Darwin, are now peaceful, Catholic and yet another unique culture in the variegated Top End of Australia.

The two islands, flat and green in the middle of the blue ocean, lie directly east of the Cobourg Peninsula.

According to the Tiwi Dreaming, the two were one until the Earth Mother swam ashore and crawled across the land, leaving deep tracks that were filled by seawater that parted them forever.

For centuries people learned to leave the islanders strictly alone, unless invited.

There was trade, across the sea to the mainland and with Indonesian boats. But there was no welcome for interlopers, especially Macassans who competed in the Tiwi fishing grounds for trepang (sea cucumber).

The Europeans who first made contact in 1705 fared little better, until the British managed to establish a precarious outpost called Fort Dundas on Melville, the larger of the two islands, in 1824.

Even the Victorian imperialists, who at their peak succeeded in holding two-thirds of the world, could not keep the Tiwis against local hostility, disease, isolation and the failure of significant trade flows to materialise through what London had been sure would be a strategic gem.

Where imperialism failed, Catholicism succeeded. The main settlement of Nguiu (pronounced new-ee) was founded on Bathurst Island in 1911, when priests arrived to establish a mission, later developing a written version of the Tiwi language and cementing a presence that is still strongly in evidence today.

It was a Catholic priest, Father McGrath, who gave Darwin its first warning of the Japanese air raid of February 19, 1942, which killed 243 people, sank eight ships, destroyed 23 aircraft, devastated the city and sent Australia into a panic.

Local tribes happened to be at war themselves that morning, when six Zeros broke off from the main Japanese force and strafed the church and an American DC3 transport on a strip nearby.

As the tribesmen broke off their battle, Father McGrath radioed an urgent warning to Darwin. It was ignored.

Later in the day the Tiwis had their revenge when a Japanese fighter crash-landed on Melville Island: local tribesman Matthias Ulungura caught the pilot from behind and ordered him to "stick 'em up, right up, two hands, no more holding hands on head."

The islanders still perform a dance to remember the attack.

Otherwise, there is little else which remains on the Tiwis from this time.

The flight into Nguiu by light aircraft from Darwin is brief and must be organised through tour operators.

From the air, Bathurst Island appears deep green against the sea, fringed by white sand beaches and with virtually no hills to break the horizon.

Nguiu itself, as the main town for a population of about 1400, is also low, with slow, wide streets connecting modern but modest tropical homes, many on poles and overhung with palms.

A large oval in the town points to an anomaly of Catholic conversion: Australian Rules football, introduced by priests from Melbourne and now played with serious enthusiasm by the islanders.

Several have made it to the AFL big time, and every year planeloads of journalists and supporters fly into Nguiu for the nationally broadcast Tiwi Islands grand final.

The indigenous culture is a more enduring attraction - distinctive Tiwi batik and silk-screened clothing, woven bangles, painted conch shells and Pukumani burial poles.

And although Bathurst is flat, it is far from featureless, with rainforests and stunning beaches - though with still-hostile wildlife, more for looking than swimming.

But there are freshwater swimming holes to cool off in on Melville Island, two of them beneath the Tomorapi and Taracumbie Falls.