The northernmost capital city in Australia, Darwin is a melting pot of peoples and cultures where the sun shines fiercely during the Dry (roughly from April/May to September/October) and the roads outside the city, to the Outback regions of the Northern Territory, often become impassable in the Wet.
Darwin, capital of the largest Australian mainland territory, is named after the English evolutionist and naturalist Charles Darwin who had never been there although he had been to Australia. "Nothing but rather sharp necessity should compel me to emigrate," he wrote of Australia.
The men who sailed on the HMS Beagle in 1839 into what was to become Darwin Harbour, which opens out into the Timor Sea, had been erstwhile shipmates of the naturalist, and they decided to name the area in his honor.
A gateway to Asia
A large part of the Northern Territory lies between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator. Darwin, being right at the Top End, is indubitably tropical with only two main seasons, the Dry from May to October and the Wet the rest of the year.
Almost within sight of the Indonesian coast, Darwin is in fact a gateway to several southeast Asian countries, with international airlines flying tourists between the Darwin International Airport and Bali and Singapore. Conversely, it is Australia's northern gateway into the continent with interstate flights to the other major Australian cities.
Japanese attack
In World War II, in the early months of the Pacific War, Darwin suffered air attacks from Japanese Zeroes and is the only Australian city to have been bombed by the Japanese in World War II.
The bombing of Darwin was recreated for the climax of Baz Luhrmann's epic film Australia starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.
Kidman's arrival
Moviegoers who've been to Darwin will recognise Stokes Hill Wharf as the place where Nicole Kidman's character, Lady Sarah Ashley, first steps on Australian soil.
Macarthur HQ
Darwin also figures in the history of the Pacific War as the place where US General Douglas MacArthur set up camp after he fled the Philippines with the fall of Bataan in early 1942.
Macarthur planned to retake the Pacific from the Japanese from his Australian headquarters in Darwin.
The rest, of course, is history.
Cyclone disaster
Relatively unharmed by the war, Darwin was to suffer humiliating defeat and devastation at the hands of Mother Nature when Cyclone Tracy laid the city low on Christmas Eve 1974.
Cyclone Tracy killed 65 people, including 49 on land and 16 at sea, and the city suffered widespread destruction.
In the aftermath of the 1974 cyclone, Darwin rebuilt itself and continued to grow. According to the Norther Territory Government, the Darwin region which includes the satellite city of Palmerston and the districts of Palmerston-East Arm, Litchfield and Finiss had a population of some 106,300 in 2006.
Kakadu and Litchfield
For all its urban growth and tropical charm, Darwin is more a way station than an ultimate destination, most tourists traveling there opting to go farther east into Kakadu, Australia’s largest national park, or south to Litchfield National Park.
Both parks shimmer with outstanding Outback beauty where the world of nature basks brightly in the sun during the Dry and, in the Wet, turns into mysterious, often dangerous, storm-lashed haunts of the terrors that inhabit the wild.
So pay Sweetheart a visit
In Darwin itself, here are some things you might want to do:
- Take the Tour Tub trolley (beats walking anytime) and enjoy some of Darwin’s more interesting tourist spots.
- Visit the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and give Sweetheart a cuddle. (Sweetheart is a five-metre crocodile responsible for sinking innumerable fishing boats.)
- Explore the arts, crafts and fruit at Mindil Beach Sunset Market, open Thursday and Sunday from late April to late October. Some of the products come from Bali.
- See avant-garde films seated in deck chairs under the stars in a sunken amphitheatre.
- Or visit Aquascene and befriend the fish.
