Aru
Located in the Arafura Sea south of New Guinea and north of Australia, the Aru Islands are the easternmost archipelago in Indonesia's Maluku province. The group of around ninety-five low-lying islands covers an area of around 180 kilometres (north-south) by eighty (east-west) with a land area of around 8500 square kilometres. Their position on the Australian plate's continental shelf puts them on the boundary between continental Asia and Melanesia, with flora and fauna closely related to New Guinea and relatively recent terrestrial links to Australia and New Guinea.
The six largest islands (Tanahbesar, a.k.a. Wokam, Wamar, Kola, Kobroor, Maikoor, Koba, and Trangan) are separated by five narrow, meandering channels, rise to low hills and are covered by a mix of tropical broadleaf forests and savanna with fringing mangroves. On one of the smaller islands (Wamar), the town of Dobo serves as the group's centre, with the main harbour and a small airport.
The islands have long-standing trading links to the Banda Islands and were visited regularly by Buginese and Makassan traders in precolonial times. Early European visitors include Martim Afonso de Melo (1522–24), Gomes de Sequeira (possibly, 1526) and Álvaro de Saavedra (1528). The earliest Dutch contact with the islands in 1623 saw Jan Carstensz negotiate a commercial treaty with villages on the west coast before he moved on to New Guinea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. While the Dutch East India Company exercised limited influence over the islands' affairs, they were a valuable source of beche-de-mer, birds-of-paradise, parrots, pearls, sago, slaves and turtle-shell.
