Qualla: Nhulunbuy https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy 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: Nhulunbuy https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy Nhulunbuy: Introduction https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ The town was almost called Gove. In 1968 the government gazetted the new mining settlement on the Gove Peninsula under that name, after a wartime airfield. Then a delegation of Yirrkala people came to the visiting Prime Minister with a correction: this place already had a name. The flat-topped hill rising behind the townsite was Nhulun, sacred to the Rirratjingu, tied to the journeys of the Dreaming ancestor Wuyal, the honey man. The town took the hill's name, becoming Nhulunbuy, 'near Nhulun'. It is a telling origin for a place that was built, quite literally, on top of Yolngu country, and whose existence set off the longest and most consequential land-rights struggle in Australian history.

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Nhulunbuy: A Town Made for a Refinery https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ Nhulunbuy exists for one reason: bauxite. After surveyors confirmed a vast deposit in the late 1950s, a company called Nabalco won the right to mine it and to build a deep-water port and an alumina refinery, and a town to house the workers. Construction in the late 1960s conjured...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-a-town-made-for-a-refinery.mp3 0:06 2 full Nhulunbuy: The Land Beneath the Lease https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ The Yolngu at Yirrkala watched their country excised for the mine without being asked, and they did not stay silent. In 1963 they sent the Yirrkala bark petitions to Federal Parliament, framing a typed protest inside their sacred clan designs; when that failed to halt the project...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-the-land-beneath-the-lease.mp3 0:06 3 full Nhulunbuy: When the Refinery Went Quiet https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ For four decades the refinery, by then owned by Rio Tinto, was the town's heartbeat. In November 2013 the company announced it would shut the alumina refinery, though not the bauxite mine, and in May 2014 production stopped. The blow was severe: around 1,100 jobs lost, the popula...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-when-the-refinery-went-quiet.mp3 0:06 4 full Nhulunbuy: Rockets Over Arnhem Land https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ Reinvention arrived from an unexpected direction: space. Sitting close to the equator, the Gove Peninsula is unusually well placed for launching rockets, and in 2019 the Arnhem Space Centre was announced nearby. In June 2022 NASA fired a series of suborbital sounding rockets from...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-rockets-over-arnhem-land.mp3 0:06 5 full Nhulunbuy: The View from Nhulun https://qualla.com/nhulunbuy/ Climb the hill the town is named for and the layers come into focus. At the summit of Nhulun, Mount Saunders, the Roy Marika Lookout, named for the Yolngu artist and land-rights leader, opens onto the Gulf of Carpentaria, the refinery, the harbour and the bush stretching away. Wh...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/j/c/6/nhulunbuy-wp/rjc6-nhulunbuy-the-view-from-nhulun.mp3 0:06 6 full