Tiwi Islands are located 40 kilometers north of Darwin, where the Arafura Sea is connected to the Timor. These are two separate islands - Melville and Betarst, a total area of ​​8320 square kilometers. Today the island is home to about 2,500 people.

From each other, separated by the Strait of Apsley island (62 km long and from 550 meters to 5 km wide). The largest city - Vurrumiyanga (until 2010 called Nguyen) on Betarste, Pirlangimpi (also known as the Garden Point) and Milikapiti (or Snake Bay) on Melville.

Most of the inhabitants of the islands - the natives of the Tiwi tribe, they are very different culturally and linguistically from the nearby mainland Aboriginal Arnhem region. Tiwi people have lived here for about 7000 years.

In 1705 in Shark Bay on the island of Melville first ships arrived with the Europeans - they were the Dutch. The first European settlement here was the Fort Dundas near the present city of Pirlangimpi Melville Island. Founded in September 1824, the fort lasted only 5 years - until 1829, when, and was abandoned, including the hostility of the local Aboriginal people. In 1911, the islands of the Catholic mission was established, and in 1912 they were declared Aboriginal reserve. Built in the 1930's wooden church today is a landmark Vurrumiyanga.

The islands are dominated by a tropical monsoon climate, which along with the existence of geographic isolation causes are characteristic flora and fauna. Local eucalyptus forests - the highest and most massive in northern Australia, and rain forests have extremely high density and length. It is home to 38 species of animals threatened with extinction, and a few species of plants and invertebrates are not found anywhere else in the world, such as earthen snail and some dragonflies. Tiwi Islands - it is the world's largest nesting site terns Berg, as well as the habitat of a large population of vulnerable olive ridley sea turtle. In 2007, he began a project for the conservation of sea turtles in the wild its habitat. The seas around the island, there are sharks and saltwater crocodiles.