Marchinbar Island is the largest

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...

in the

Wessel Islands The Wessel Islands is a group of uninhabited islands in the Northern Territory of Australia. They extend in a more or less straight line from Buckingham Bay and the Napier Peninsula of Arnhem Land, and Elcho Island, to the northeast. Marchinbar ...

in the

Northern Territory of Australia The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

in the

Arafura Sea The Arafura Sea (or Arafuru Sea) lies west of the Pacific Ocean, overlying the continental shelf between Australia and Western New Guinea (also called Papua), which is the Indonesian part of the Island of New Guinea. Geography The Arafura S ...

Location

It is separated from

Rimbija Island Rimbija Island is the northernmost island of the Wessel Islands group in the Northern Territory of Australia. The most northerly point of the small island is called Cape Wessel. It is separated from Marchinbar Island to the south by a narrow stra ...

, the most northeasterly of the

, by a narrow channel, which is less than meters across at its narrowest point. In the southeast, it is separated from Guluwuru Island by ''Cumberland Strait'', which is meters wide at its narrowest point.

Geomorphology

The island is a long and narrow island, 57.4 km long and maximally 8 km wide. It measures 210.9 km² in area. The most northerly point of the island is called Low Point. ''Sphinx Head'' is a site of conspicuous cliffs up to 67 meters high, about 16 km SSW of Low Point. Two flat-topped hills south of Sphinx Head rise to a maximum height of 79 metres. The entire east coast of the island is cliffy and high.

Administration

Administratively, Marchinbar Island is part of ''Gumurr Marthakal Ward'' of

East Arnhem Region The East Arnhem Region is a local government area of the Northern Territory, Australia, governed by the East Arnhem Regional Council. Situated in the far north-eastern corner of the Northern Territory, the region covers an area of and had a pop ...

Settlement

The only settlement is Martjanba, a small family outstation on Jensen Bay in the northern part of the island.

Habitat

Marchinbar Island was until recently the last habitat still containing a population of the golden bandicoot (''Isoodon auratus''), which was once found throughout northern, central and western Australia, and as far south as New South Wales. As part of a salvage operation to ensure diversification, numbers of the Marchinbar Island bandicoots have been translocated to the islands of Raragala and Guluwuru.

Discovery of ancient coins

In 1944, nine coins were discovered at Djinjan creek immediately south of Jensen Bay. Four of the coins were later identified as Dutch

duit The duit (plural: ''duiten''; en , doit) was a copper Dutch coin worth 2 ''penning'', with 8 duit pieces equal to one ''stuiver'' and 160 duit pieces equal to one ''gulden''. In Dutch Indonesia 4 duit pieces were equal to one ''stuiver''. ...

s dating from 1690 to the 1780s while five with Arabic inscriptions were identified as being from the

Kilwa Sultanate The Kilwa Sultanate ( fa, پادشاهی کیلوا) was a sultanate, centered at Kilwa (an island off modern-day, Kilwa District in Lindi Region of Tanzania), whose authority, at its height, stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Co ...

of east

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Only one such Kilwan coin had ever previously been found outside east Africa (unearthed during an excavation in

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of ...

). The inscriptions on the Jensen Bay coins identify a ruling Sultan of Kilwa, but it is unclear whether the ruler was from the 10th century or the 14th century. This discovery has been of interest to those historians who believe it likely that seafaring people made landfall in Australia or its offshore islands after Aboriginal settlement and before the first generally accepted such sighting, by the Dutch sailor

Willem Janszoon Willem Janszoon (; ), sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz., was a Dutch navigator and colonial governor. Janszoon served in the Dutch East Indies in the periods 16031611 and 16121616, including as governor of Fort Henricus on the island of S ...

in 1606. A similar coin, also thought to be from the Medieval Kilwa sultanate was found in 2018 on

Elcho Island Elcho Island, known to its traditional owners as Galiwin'ku (Galiwinku) is an island off the coast of Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located at the southern end of the Wessel Islands group located in the East Arnhem ...

, also in the Wessel Islands group.

Notes

Citations

Sources

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External links

Wessel Islands map
{{Islands of the Northern Territory, state=collapsed Islands of the Northern Territory Pre-1606 contact with Australia