Raffles Bay is a

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

on the northern coast of the

Cobourg Peninsula The Cobourg Peninsula is located east of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is deeply indented with coves and bays, covers a land area of about , and is virtually uninhabited with a population ranging ...

of the Top End of the

Northern Territory 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 Au ...

of Australia. It was named in 1818 by explorer

Phillip Parker King Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna J ...

after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. It is about 10 km long north to south, 5 km wide at its mouth and 3 km wide at its inland end. It lies about 210 km north-east of

Darwin Darwin may refer to: Common meanings * Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection * Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...

and opens on to the northern end of Bowen Strait, between the Cobourg Peninsula and Croker Island, and 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 Sea i ...

. It was the site of an abortive attempt to establish the British military outpost and settlement of Fort Wellington, which lasted only two years, from 1827 to 182

The surrounds of the bay are largely uninhabited; it now lies within the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park.

References

Bays of the Northern Territory Cobourg Peninsula {{NorthernTerritory-geo-stub