Tiwi Islands Australia Indigenous tourism: Experiencing art and culture on a Tiwi tour

Who knew I was an artist? It took the people at the Tiwi Design Centre to find that talent, and I'd be no talent without theirs.

They might be remote, but there's a long history of contact with other cultures in the Tiwi Islands.

Outside the church at Wurrumiyanga is a statue of islander Matthias Ulungura, acknowledging his courage and initiative in capturing a World War II Japanese pilot who had crash landed. Pretending his small axe was a gun in a "stick-em-up" manouevre, Ulungura relieved the pilot of his pistol.

The church is there, of course, because Catholic missionaries had made their way to the islands earlier that century. And along came another culture, Australian football, a sport embraced with the passion of a religion. The islands' current priest comes from Homebush in Sydney and is a fan of the Giants, the Greater Western Sydney AFL team, so he is known as "Father Giants".

But way back, farther back than any of these contacts, the Tiwi Islanders were trading with the Makassan people from Sulawesi, in what is now Indonesia. Perhaps they looked more north than south, for there is no tradition of didgeridoos or boomerangs among the Tiwi. There is, however, a deep history of art and design.

We make our way there as part of a Tiwi by Design tour run by SeaLink NT and Tiwi Design. It starts with a 2.5 hour ferry ride from Darwin's Cullen Bay over the Arafura Sea to Bathurst Island. There isn't much to see along the way, just an oil-rig that could be mistaken for a ghost ship until it emerges from the distance. But the ride is relaxing in the air-conditioned cabin or up on deck with the tropical breeze wrapping around you like a linen shirt.

We land on the red banks of Bathurst Island with Melville Island just across the channel. Melville is Australia's second largest island, after Tasmania, covering an area of around 6000 square kilometres but with a population of about 1000. Bathurst Island has the largest settlement - Wurrumiyanga - and a population of around 1640.