Australia’s looming football grand finals are whipping fanatics into a frenzy - but if you reckon we mainlanders are crazy about our favourite national sport, just wait till you get to the Tiwi Islands, 80 kilometres north of Darwin!
Australian Rules Football (that’s AFL for the uninitiated) attracts a following of almost cult proportions here - and with team names like the Pumarali Thunder and Lightning, Tapalinga Superstars, Imalu Tigers and Muluwurri Magpie Geese, who wouldn’t get excited?
With more than a third of the 2600 residents of the Tiwi’s Bathurst and Melville Islands involved in the regular Tiwi AFL competition, they lay claim to having the highest football participation rate of any community in Australia.
Pint-sized boys and girls play barefoot footy with breathtaking skills before the daily school bell rings each day. Their heroes are local AFL legends like the magical Micheal Long who played with Essendon, and the late Maurice Rioli, an all-time Richmond Tigers’ champion whose talented family members have followed in his wake to the pinnacle of the sport, playing for top Australian teams on the MCG.
There’s no better way to witness this wild football passion than to join the throngs at the annual Tiwi Islands Football Grand Final.
The event is staged on the last Sunday in March at the Tiwi capital of Wurrumiyanga (named Nguiu until it was changed in 2010) and attracts more than 4000 spectators, many of whom pay big dollars for a seat on a fleet of light aircraft bringing in tourists for the big carnival. Dotted among the crowd are talent scouts from the top Australian teams, checking the kicking, marking, rucking skills of potential rookies and future champions that they might lure south.
This unique tropical island-style footy grand final has become one of the Northern Territory’s - and now, one of the nation’s - most eagerly anticipated annual sporting spectacles.
Tiwi Islanders are also prolific artists renowned for their paintings, pottery, sculptures and wooden carvings.
The annual Tiwi Islands Art Sale is timed to coincide with the football grand final and the contributing artists work long and hard through the wet season to have their exquisite pieces ready for this special day.
The sale gets underway at 8.00am on the Sunday and winds up at around 2pm so everyone, including the artists, can get to the football oval in time for the rousing grand final kick-off.
This exciting family gathering has provided a rare opportunity for people to visit Bathurst Island for a day when the normal visitor permit requirements are waivered. Tiwi footballers are renowned for their exquisite ball-handling skills and the grand final’s on-field pace is as fast and as furious as that emanating from the fever-pitched sidelines.
Nguiu is only 20 minutes from Darwin by air but if you baulk at the idea of taking to the sky in a light plane, Darwin-based Sea-cat Ferries and Charters offers the perfect alternative - a two-hour cruise across the tropical blue waters of the Beagle Gulf to Nguiu aboard the comfy Arafura Pearl.
For details on how to get there, visit: www.travelnt.com.au
PICTURED: Scenes from a recent Tiwi Islands Grand Final (Photos: Courtesy Tourism NT)
