Melville Island (Yermalner in Tiwi) is one of the Tiwi Islands, lying in the eastern Timor Sea off the Northern Territory coast of Australia.
Together with Bathurst Island and nine smaller uninhabited islands, it forms the Tiwi Islands group, which falls under Northern Territory jurisdiction in association with the Tiwi Land Council as the regional authority. The island is roughly the same size as Prince Edward Island in Canada. The Tiwi people have inhabited these islands for thousands of years, maintaining distinct cultural traditions separate from mainland Aboriginal groups. The islands’ isolation, separated from the mainland by the Clarence and Dundas straits, has shaped both their ecology and the development of Tiwi language and customs.
