The Tiwi Islands lie to the north of the Australian mainland in the Arafura Sea, and are part of the Northern Territory. The island group consists of two large inhabited islands (Melville and Bathurst), and nine smaller uninhabited islands. Both Bathurst and Melville are inhabited by the Tiwi people who are indigenous to Australia. In 2011, the total population of Bathurst island was 1500 and most of the population live in Wurrumiyanga which is on the far eastern shore of the island. The fires that are seen in this Aqua satellite image are on the western coast of the island in a mostly uninhabited remote area, however there is a settlement on the west coast named Wurankuwu which could be impacted by these fires. Most likely these are seasonal bushfires. Currently these fires are not listed on the Northern Territory of Australia’s incident report.
NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on June 19, 2017. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from the Government of the Northern Territory and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.