Yirrkala

Yirrkala is a small community in East Arnhem Region, Northern Territory of Australia, 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-east from the large mining town of Nhulunbuy, on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land.

Yirrkala is a small community in East Arnhem Region,Northern Territory of Australia, 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-east from the large mining town of Nhulunbuy, on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land. It population comprises predominantly Aboriginal Australians of the Yolngu people, and it is also home to a number of Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots and engineers based in Arnhem Land providing air transport services.In the 2016 census, Yirrkala had a population of 809 people.

There has been an Aboriginal community at Yirrkala throughout recorded history, but the community increased enormously in size when Yirrkala mission was founded in 1935.

Yirrkala played a pivotal role in the development of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians when the document Bark Petition was created at Yirrkala in 1963 and sent to the Federal Government to protest at the Prime Minister's announcement that a parcel of their land was to be sold to a bauxite mining company. Although the petition itself was unsuccessful in the sense that the bauxite mining at Nhulunbuy went ahead as planned, it alerted non-Indigenous Australians to the need for Indigenous representation in such decisions, and prompted a government report recommending payment of compensation, protection of sacred sites, creation of a permanent parliamentary standing committee to scrutinise developments at Yirrkala, and also acknowledged the Indigenous people's moral right to their lands. The Bark Petition is on display in the Parliament House in Canberra.

The settlement was funded as an outstation during the 1980s.At the 2006 census, Yirrkala had a population of 687.