Qualla: Groote Eylandt https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:32 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Groote Eylandt https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt Groote Eylandt: Introduction https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ The Anindilyakwa people call this place Ayangkidarrba, which means, simply, "island." When the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman charted it in 1644, he gave it a name that meant almost the same thing in another tongue: Groote Eylandt, archaic Dutch for "large island." Two languages, two strangers' tongues, one piece of red earth in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the fourth-largest island in all of Australia. But the people who named it Ayangkidarrba had already been here for thousands of years, painting its caves and reading its tides, and they are here still.

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Groote Eylandt: Fourteen Clans, One Island https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ Groote Eylandt lies about fifty kilometres off the Arnhem Land coast, opposite Blue Mud Bay and some 630 kilometres from Darwin, a low, sprawling landmass of 2,326 square kilometres rising in places to the 219-metre Central Hill. Its traditional owners, the Anindilyakwa, are orga...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-fourteen-clans-one-island.mp3 0:06 2 full Groote Eylandt: The Macassan Wind https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ Those painted boats were praus, and they belonged to Macassan traders from Sulawesi, in what is now Indonesia. From at least the early 1700s, perhaps far earlier, they rode the monsoon winds south each year to harvest trepang, the sea cucumber prized in the kitchens of southern C...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-the-macassan-wind.mp3 0:06 3 full Groote Eylandt: Missions, Cyclones and the Black Box https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ European settlement came in 1921, when the Church Missionary Society built a mission at Emerald River. After a cyclone wrecked it in 1943, the mission moved to the Angurugu River. One detail of that mission era reaches, improbably, into every airliner flying today. In 1925, a boy...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-missions-cyclones-and-the-black-box.mp3 0:06 4 full Groote Eylandt: Manganese and Its Shadow https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ Beneath the western side of the island lies one of the richest manganese deposits on Earth. Mining began on 25 July 1964 under the Groote Eylandt Mining Company, GEMCO, and the company town of Alyangula rose to house its workers. Today GEMCO is run by South32, supplying a signifi...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-manganese-and-its-shadow.mp3 0:06 5 full Groote Eylandt: Whose Country This Is https://qualla.com/groote-eylandt/ The modern story of Groote Eylandt is one of Aboriginal people reclaiming control. Under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the island became Aboriginal freehold in 1976, and the Anindilyakwa Land Council, one of only four such bodies in the Territory, now speaks for its owners. The...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/9/0/groote-eylandt-wp/rj90-groote-eylandt-whose-country-this-is.mp3 0:06 6 full