Destination Profile - Bathurst Island, Northern Territory
The Tiwi Islands are located 100km north of Darwin. The Dundas strait separates Melville and Bathurst Island from Mainland Australia. Melville Island is Australia's largest island after Tasmania.
The Tiwi people currently live in communities on the islands. In spite of the fact that each community has a store selling essential foods, hunting for traditional food is still an important part of Tiwi life.
On the land, people hunt for wallaby, lizards, possums, carpet snakes, pig, buffalo, flying foxes, bandicoot, turtle and seagull eggs and magpie geese.
From the sea people hunt for turtle, crocodiles, dugong and they catch a large variety of fish. Tiwis collect cockles, oysters, yuwuli worms, mud mussels and crabs, bush apples, plums and yams, sugar bag, mangoes, cashews, pawpaw and coconuts. Although in many cases rifles, plastic buckets and Toyotas have replaced spears, tunga bags and feet, the social aspects of hunting remains important. For Tiwi, hunting, collecting and cooking food is a shared activity.
On the Tiwi Islands the art of body painting for ceremony has been practiced for thousands of years. The decorative patterning of the Tiwi was also used on Pukumani poles (mortuary poles) and tungas (bark baskets). The traditional form of mark making was derived from the creation story. Today these decorative forms have been applied to many different medium. These include painting, carving, textiles, print making, pottery, pandanus weaving and jewellery making.
This destination is part of the Flyaway Faraway Kimberley Style Australian Adventure.
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