Tiwi Islands Football Brings Community Together

TIWI ISLANDS,AUSTRALIA - MARCH 5: Tapalunga players celebrate during an Australian Rules football match at their local oval March 5, 2007 on the Tiwi Island, Australia. Australian Rules football holds a special position in the lives of people of the Tiwi Islands, which are located just off the coast north of Darwin. At present about 500 or 20% of all Tiwis play in regular football competitions arranged for boys and girls, men and women on both Melville and Bathurst Islands. The Tiwi Islands Football League, which is played during the northern wet season of October through to March, began in 1969. It currently has seven teams, and the grand final in the end of March is one of the largest tourism events in the North. The professional game shown in these pictures are between Pumralli (in the red) and Tapalunga, who won by one point on a score in the final minutes, in Nuigi on Bathurst Island. Like Aborigines throughout Australia, the arrival of people to the Tiwi Islands dates back more than 50,000 years. Unlike Aborigines elsewhere in Australia, the Tiwis were spared white incursions onto their land and have retained complete control of their home islands of Bathurst and Melville to this day. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)