Nhulunbuy
Nhulunbuy, also formerly known as Gove, is a town and locality in the far north of the Northern Territory of Australia. Founded on the Gove Peninsula in north-east Arnhem Land when a bauxite mine and deep water port were established in the late 1960s, the town's economy largely revolved around its alumina refinery until it closed in May 2014. The town is a private mining town residing on Aboriginal-owned land.
Nhulun, named Mount Saunders by Matthew Flinders, is a flat-topped hill rising behind the town, which gets its name from this sacred site. In the, the locality of Nhulunbuy had a population of 3,350 people.
History
This area in Northeast Arnhem Land has been home to various Yolngu clans of Aboriginal people for at least 40,000 years.Matthew Flinders, in his circumnavigation of Australia in 1803, met the Macassan trading fleet near present-day Nhulunbuy, an encounter that led to the establishment of settlements on Melville Island and the Cobourg Peninsula. A beach close to the township is named Macassan Beach in honour of this encounter.
Flinders also named the highest rise on the low-lying escarpment, a flat-topped hill rising to, Mount Saunders. This hill was a [Australian Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal sacred site|sacred site] for the Rirratjingu clan of Yolngu people, who already had a name for it – Nhulun. The site had been assigned to Wandjuk Marika by his father, the respected elder Mawalan Marika. Flinders named it Mt Saunders after Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville. Flinders also gave names to various other nearby features after the same man, including Mount Dundas, Melville Isle, and Melville Bay.
Exploration of bauxite reserves in the area began in 1955. In 1963, an Australian Government decision excised part of the land for a bauxite mine and alumina refinery, to be developed by the Gove Bauxite Corporation, a French-owned company known as GOMINCO. The Yolngu people at Yirrkala were upset at not having been consulted about the excising of their land, and forwarded two petitions, known as the Yirrkala bark petitions due to their being mounted on bark, to the Australian House of Representatives. The federal government appointed a select committee to investigate the people's grievances, which made recommendations to protect certain sacred sites and allocate hunting rights in some areas. The bark petitions attracted national and international attention, and are now regarded as a landmark in the fight for Indigenous land rights in Australia, although unsuccessful. One of the petitions hangs in Parliament House, Canberra.
After GOMINCO had abandoned its bid for the site, in 1968 the Gove Agreement was negotiated between the Commonwealth Government and the North Australian Bauxite and Alumina Company, which gave Nabalco the rights to establish the mine and refinery.
The new mining town was gazetted as Gove, but a conference of Yolngu elders decided that the town should be named Nhulunbuy; Nhulun was the Yolngu name for Mount Saunders, next to which the town was to be laid out, and -buy means "from". They created the Wuyul petition, decorated with a picture of ancestral spirit Wuyul the Honey Man, who is believed to have created the features of Nhulun. This petition was presented to Parliament by Gough Whitlam, and it was reported widely by newspapers, which backed the change of name. The petition was successful, and the town was renamed as requested.
In 1969, Nabalco assigned its interests in the agreement to the Gove Joint Venture Participants, and the government granted a Special Mineral Lease and several Special Purpose Leases to this entity. In 1971, the Yolngu people at Yirrkala took court action against Nabalco and the Commonwealth Government, in a case later known as the Gove land rights case. The people asked for their lands to be freed from occupation by the mining company and prevention of further mining activities; the main issue was recognition by Australian law of the rights of Aboriginal people to ownership of the land through the doctrine of communal native title. The plaintiffs lost the case, which was presided over by Justice Blackburn. Nabalco developed the mine, plant, and associated infrastructure, and began its export of alumina bauxite in 1972.
The town of Nhulunbuy was established to house the workers employed by the company. The town was originally gazetted as Gove on 21 August 1968, but, after a delegation of Yirrkala people who said that Nhulunbuy was the name given to the area Dreamtime ancestor Wuyal, Prime Minister John Gorton, on a visit to the NT, announced that the town would be given this name. It was only officially renamed Nhulunbuy in 2007. The name of the town is derived from combining "Nhulun" and buy, which means "nearby" in the local language.
Nabalco became Alcan Inc. and acquired 100% of the Gove project in 2001. In 2003, Alcan Gove issued a notice of intent to the Government of the Northern Territory re third stage expansion of the alumina refinery. Rio Tinto acquired Alcan in 2007.
The alumina refinery closed in May 2014, which resulted in 1,100 workers being redeployed or made redundant, and reduced the Nhulunbuy population by 700 to 3,240 in the 2016 Australian census.
On 29 November 2013, Rio Tinto announced the closure of the alumina refinery by July 2014, with the loss of 1,100 jobs, or almost 25% of the town's population. The refinery ceased production in May 2014. Nhulunbuy's population had already dropped by mid-2014, with some of the workforce retained to monitor the shutdown and survey holding ponds full of toxic compounds, but most scheduled to be gone by January 2015. A range of measures were announced to support the town and its former workers through the closure and the following three years, but locals anticipated further cuts to services, since the school, hospital, power plant and flights were backed by Rio Tinto. The closure of the refinery also left flights on the Darwin-Nhulunbuy route to fall to around 50 to 60 per cent full, causing QantasLink to suspend flights on the route from 17 August 2014.
For the purposes of granting tax rebates to residents of isolated areas as per Section 79A of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936, the census population of Nhulunbuy was taken to be less than 2,500, although it was in fact 3,240 in the 2016 census.
In 2019, the Arnhem Space Centre near Nhulunbuy, an equatorial satellite launch facility, was announced. In June 2022, it was announced that NASA would launch three rockets from the Arnhem Space Centre. This is the first time NASA launched a rocket from a commercial launch site outside the United States.
Geography
The hill behind the town, Mount Saunders or Nhulun, has an elevation of.Governance
Nhulunbuy is an unincorporated area. It is a "Special Purpose" private mining town situated on Aboriginal Land, with a complex tenure. Since 1972, Nhulunbuy Corporation Ltd has controlled the town. Since 2022 and as of 2025, Shane Whitten is CEO of the company.The town is within the Northern Territory Electoral division of Mulka, and the federal Division of Lingiari.
The Territory division was created in 1974 for the first election of the Legislative Assembly, then named Nhulunbuy. It was renamed Mulka in the 2019 redistribution, when the division was enlarged significantly outside the town. Mulka is a Yolngu Matha word, for which several translations have been offered: according to the NT Electoral Commission, it means "dry area", also used to describe a meeting place for business and diplomatic discussions. According to the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre website, the word means "a sacred but public ceremony", as well as "to hold or protect". In the 2024 NT election, Independent Yingiya Mark Guyula was elected for Mulka by a large margin, although the town of Nhulunbuy voted for candidate Allen Fanning by a small margin.
The federal Division of Lingiari was established at the 2001 election, with the present boundaries gazetted on 4 March 2025. It was named in honour of Vincent Lingiari, the Indigenous land rights leader who led the Gurindji strike in 1966.
At the 2025 Australian federal election, Australian Labor Party candidate Marion Scrymgour won the seat with 44.64% of votes cast.
Tourism and recreation
Most supplies and visitors are brought by air to Gove Airport or by sea.Visitors need to obtain a visitor access permit from Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation, a Yolŋu-owned and -operated not-for-profit organisation that looks after the Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area, covering of Aboriginal land and sea country, to access certain recreation areas, including:
- The Roy Marika Lookout is located at the summit of Nhulun / Mount Saunders, accessible via Wuyal Road, or via the Nhulunbuy Walk Trail Network's Nhulun Walk. The walk from Nhulunbuy town centre to the lookout is around there and back.
- Gadalathami, the Town Beach, on the eastern side of the town, is the closest beach to Nhulunbuy. It faces the Gulf of Carpentaria.
- Dharrpamiwuy, or Middle Beach, is around from the town, and serves as the venue for the Nhulunbuy Rotary Club's annual Beach Volleyball Tournament. The beach has white sand and plenty of shade.
- Wirrwawuy is a popular fishing spot, around away via a sealed road.
Facilities
East Arnhem Regional Council provides services to residents such as:- aged care and disability services
- animal management
- childcare services
- nutrition and wellbeing programs
- youth, sport and recreation programs
Education
There are three schools in Nhulunbuy: Nhulunbuy Primary School, Nhulunbuy High School, and Nhulunbuy Christian College.Nhulunbuy Primary School was established as Nhulunbuy Area School in 1972, becoming a primary school in 1981. It is one of the largest primary schools in the Northern Territory.
Nhulunbuy Christian College, established as Nhulunbuy Christian School in 1999, is a non-denominational primary and middle school. Northern Territory Christian College provides senior school education.
Nhulunbuy High School, which opened in 1981, caters for students in years 7–12. In 2017, Nhulunbuy High School opened a $20 million boarding facility, which provides increased educational opportunities to remote students.
Media
As a result of the refinery curtailment and subsequent loss of advertising revenue, Gove's only source of local news, the Arafura Times, published its final issue in mid-October 2016.Gove Online publishes news about Nhulunbuy and East Arnhem Land.