[2][3][4] The islands are located in the Northern Territory about 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the north of the Australian mainland and are bounded by the Timor Sea in the north and the west, in the south by the Beagle Gulf, the Clarence Strait and Van Diemen Gulf and in the east by the Dundas Strait.

The Tiwi are an Aboriginal Australian people, culturally and linguistically distinct from those of Arnhem Land on the mainland just across the water.

[15] There were other visits by explorers and navigators in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including by Dutchman Pieter Pieterszoon, Frenchman Nicholas Baudin and Briton Philip Parker King.

[17] In February 1824 Captain Gordon Bremer was appointed by the Admiralty, upon instruction from the British Colonial Office, to take possession of Bathurst and Melville Islands, along with the Cobourg Peninsula (now part of Arnhem Land) on the mainland to the east, subject to the land being unoccupied by any people except "...the Natives of those or any of the other Eastern Islands".

[19] Despite the failure of the settlement, Bremer had claimed the northern area of the continent and adjacent islands as part of New South Wales[20] (then under Governor Thomas Brisbane[18]).

In September 1910 the German Catholic missionary Francis Xavier Gsell applied for a license to establish a Christian mission in similar way that land grants had been made in British New Guinea.

In the same month the South Australian government declared the whole of Bathurst Island an Aboriginal reserve, and granted 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) for the mission.

[16] The Catholic mission had positive impacts, through access to education and welfare services, but also negative effects through the suppression of Aboriginal language and culture.

[40] Paru villagers soon started a cottage industry of wood carving and had several pioneering Tiwi artists including Declan Apuatimi, Enraeld Munkara and Mick Aruni.

The creation of their artwork is usually a social activity and consists of groups of people sitting together and talking whilst they work in a relaxed fashion.

[43] They are made from ironwood and decorated with white clay, black charcoal, and ground yellow or red ochre.

Dancers thread their way amongst the tutini and at the end of the ceremony, Tunga, or painted bark baskets, are placed on top of the posts.

[46][47] The band B2M ("Bathurst to Melville"), fronted by Jeffrey "Yello" Simon, was formed in the Tiwi Islands in December 2004[48] in Nguiu (now Wurrumiyanga)[49] Simon, who started a career in the police force and had to attend attempted suicides, was determined to try to make a difference through music.

[48] As of 2015 other band members included Greg Orsto, James “Fab” Kantilla, Daniel Cunningham, Darren Narul and dancer Shelton Murray, all of whom sing.

They had been working with Australian-Irish musician Steve Cooney, including experimenting with mixing up traditional Irish Gaelic music with Tiwi sounds.

[49] Australian rules football is the most popular sport on the Tiwi Islands, and was introduced in 1941 by missionaries John Pye[54] and Andy Howley.

[57] The Tiwi Islands Football League Grand Final is held in March each year and attracts up to 3,000 spectators.

The Tiwi Islands Football Club was the subject of a series on ABC's Message Stick in 2009, called "In A League of Their Own".

[64] SeaLink NT operates ferry services connecting Wurrumiyanga and Darwin, making the 2.5-hour trip each way three days a week.

The islands' climatic and geographical extremity means that they have distinctive vegetation and special conservation values:because of their isolation and because they have extremely high rainfall, the Tiwi Islands support many species not recorded elsewhere in the Northern Territory (or in the world), and some range-restricted species.

The Tiwi Islands contain the Territory’s best-developed (tallest and with greatest basal area) eucalypt forests and an unusually high density and extent of rainforests.

[68] Tiwi is subject to a recurring meteorological phenomenon, dubbed Hector, wherein a thunderstorm forms nearly every day from November to December and February through March.

There are small patches of rainforest occurring in association with perennial freshwater springs, and mangroves occupying the numerous inlets.

Invasive mammals on the islands include black rats, cats, pigs, water buffalo, horses, and cattle.

[75] The Tiwi Land Council is currently working to eradicate feral pigs from Melville Island before they can establish a large population.

[76] The islands have been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because they support relatively high densities of red goshawks, partridge pigeons and bush stone-curlews, as well as up to 12,000 (over 1% of the world population) great knots.

Other birds for which the Tiwi Island populations are globally significant include chestnut rails, beach stone-curlews, northern rosellas, varied lorikeets, rainbow pittas, silver-crowned friarbirds, white-gaped, yellow-tinted and bar-breasted honeyeaters, canary white-eyes and masked finches.

[78][79] A native softwood enterprise was established in the mid-1980s, as a partnership between the private sector and the Land Council, but by the mid-1990s, the Land Council was winding the venture down, noting that its investor partner had "various tax driven ambitions which are growingly incompatible with our own employment and sustainable production goals".

[84] In September 2007 the Northern Territory Government investigated claims that the company had breached environmental laws,[85] with financial penalties being imposed by the Federal environment department in 2008.

[84] Much of the cleared land is used for cattle or monoculture plantations, which the timber company has maintained are an important source of local jobs.