MELVILLE ISLAND

island in the Timor Sea, 16 miles (26 km) off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. It is separated from the Australian mainland by Clarence Strait. Measuring about 80 by 55 miles (130 by 88 km), it has an area of 2,240 square miles (5,800 square km) and rises from sandy beaches and shoreline mangrove swamps to low wooded hills. It is divided from Bathurst Island (west) by the narrow Apsley Strait and from Coburg Peninsula (east) by the Dundas Strait. The island, sighted in 1644 by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman, was named in 1818 by Captain Phillip Parker King in honour of Robert Saunders Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, first lord of the Admiralty. The island was the site (182429) of Fort Dundas, the first British attempt to settle Australia's north coast. Populated chiefly by Aborigines, with a government settlement and Catholic missions, the island produces some pearls, trepang (sea cucumbers), and timber. Large herds of wild buffalo, descended from introduced Asian stock that infested the island, have recently been exterminated. Melville Island, known to Aborigines as Yermalner, is one of the few areas in Australia still occupied by its original Aboriginal peoples, the Tiwi, and in 1978 ownership of the island passed from the Australian government to the Tiwi Land Council. Pop. (1981) 554. one of the largest of the Parry Islands, in the Arctic Ocean, divided between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut territory, Canada. Separated from Victoria Island (south) by Viscount Melville Sound and from Banks Island (southwest) by McClure Strait, Melville Island is about 200 miles (320 km) long and 30130 miles (50210 km) wide with an area of 16,274 square miles (42,149 square km). Deeply indented by Hecla and Griper Bay on the north coast and by Liddon Gulf on the southwest, the island rises in the northwest to 3,500 feet (1,067 metres). It has no human habitation but supports musk-oxen and has natural-gas deposits. Discovered (1819) by Sir William Parry, it was named for Robert Saunders Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, then first lord of the Admiralty.