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Founding
Founding of Darwin
capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia, and the surrounding area
- 1869
- Oceania
Founding
capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia, and the surrounding area
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Darwin ( DAR-win; Larrakia: Garramilla) is the capital and largest city of the Northern Territory, Australia. The city had a population of 139,902 at the 2021 census, which is nearly 63% of the territory's population. It is the smallest, wettest, and most northerly of the Australian capital cities and serves as the Top End's regional centre.
Darwin's proximity to Southeast Asia makes it a key link between Australia and countries such as Indonesia and Timor-Leste. The Stuart Highway begins in Darwin and extends southwards across central Australia through Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, concluding in Port Augusta, South Australia. The city is built upon a low bluff overlooking Darwin Harbour. Darwin's suburbs extend to Lee Point in the north and to Berrimah in the east. The Stuart Highway extends to Darwin's eastern satellite city of Palmerston and its suburbs.
The Darwin region, like much of the Top End, has a tropical climate, with a wet and dry season. A period known locally as "the build up" leading up to Darwin's wet season sees temperature and humidity increase. Darwin's wet season typically arrives in late November to early December and brings with it heavy monsoonal downpours, spectacular lightning displays, and increased cyclone activity. During the dry season, the city has clear skies and mild sea breezes from the harbour.
The Larrakia people are the traditional owners of the Darwin area, and Aboriginal people are a significant proportion of the population. On 9 September 1839, HMS Beagle sailed into Darwin Harbour during its survey of the area. John Clements Wickham named the region "Port Darwin" in honour of Charles Darwin, who had sailed with them on the ship's previous voyage. The settlement there became the town of Palmerston in 1869, but was renamed Darwin in 1911. Darwin has been almost entirely rebuilt four times, following devastation caused by a cyclone in 1897, another one in 1937, Japanese air raids during World War II, and Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
The Aboriginal people of the Larrakia language group are the traditional custodians and earliest known inhabitants of the greater Darwin area. Their name for the area is Garramilla, pronounced and meaning "white stone", referring to the colour of rock and sea cliffs found in the area. They had trading routes with Southeast Asia (see Macassan contact with Australia) and imported goods from as far afield as South and Western Australia. Established songlines penetrated throughout the country, allowing stories and histories to be told and retold along the routes.
The Dutch visited Australia's northern coastline in the 1600s and landed on the Tiwi Islands only to be attacked by the Tiwi peoples. The Dutch created the first European maps of the area. This accounts for the Dutch names in the area, such as Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt. During this period, Dutch explorers named the region around Darwin—sometimes including nearby Kimberley—variations of "Van Diemen's Land", after the VOC governor-general Anthony van Diemen. This should not be confused with the more general and prolonged use of the same name for Tasmania.
The first Briton to see Darwin harbour appears to have been Lieutenant John Lort Stokes of HMS Beagle on 9 September 1839. The ship's captain, Commander John Clements Wickham, named the port after Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who had sailed with him when he served as first lieutenant on the earlier second expedition of the Beagle.
In 1863, the Northern Territory was transferred from New South Wales to South Australia. In 1864 South Australia sent B. T. Finniss north as Government Resident to survey and found a capital for its new territory. Finniss chose a site at Escape Cliffs, near the entrance to Adelaide River, about 60 kilometres (37 mi) northeast of the modern city. This attempt was short-lived, and the settlement abandoned by 1865.
On 5 February 1869, George Goyder, the Surveyor-General of South Australia, established a small settlement of 135 people at Port Darwin between Fort Hill and the escarpment. Goyder named the settlement Palmerston after British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. In 1870, the first poles for the Overland Telegraph were erected in Darwin, connecting Australia to the rest of the world. The discovery of gold by employees of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line digging holes for telegraph poles at Pine Creek in the 1880s spawned a gold rush, which further boosted the colony's development.
In February 1872 the brigantine Alexandra was the first private vessel to sail from an English port directly to Darwin, carrying people many of whom were coming to recent gold finds.
In early 1875 Darwin's white population had grown to approximately 300 because of the gold rush. On 17 February 1875 the SS Gothenburg left Darwin en route for Adelaide. The approximately 88 passengers and 34 crew (surviving records vary) included government officials, circuit-court judges, Darwin residents taking their first furlough, and miners. While travelling south along the north Queensland coast, the Gothenburg encountered a cyclone-strength storm and was wrecked on a section of the Great Barrier Reef. Only 22 men survived, while between 98 and 112 people perished. Many passengers who perished were Darwin residents, and news of the tragedy severely affected the small community, which reportedly took several years to recover.
In the 1870s, relatively large numbers of Chinese settled at least temporarily in the Northern Territory; many were contracted to work the goldfields and later to build the Palmerston to Pine Creek railway. By 1888 there were 6,122 Chinese in the Northern Territory, mostly in or around Darwin. The early Chinese settlers were mainly from Guangdong Province. The Chinese community established Darwin Chinatown. At the end of the 19th century, anti-Chinese feelings grew in response to the 1890s economic depression, and the White Australia policy meant many Chinese left the territory. But some stayed, became British subjects, and established a commercial base in Darwin.
The Northern Territory was initially settled and administered by South Australia, until its transfer to the Commonwealth in 1911. In the same year, the city's official name changed from Palmerston to Darwin.
The period between 1911 and 1919 was filled with political turmoil, particularly with trade union unrest, which culminated on 17 December 1918. Led by Harold Nelson, some 1,000 demonstrators marched to Government House at Liberty Square in Darwin, where they burnt an effigy of the Administrator of the Northern Territory, John Gilruth, and demanded his resignation. The incident became known as the Darwin Rebellion. Their grievances were against the two main Northern Territory employers: Vestey's Meatworks and the federal government. Both Gilruth and the Vestey company left Darwin soon afterward.
On 18 October 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic, the SS Mataram sailing from Singapore with infected passengers arrived in Darwin.
In 1931, the 17 remaining patients from the leprosarium at Cossack, Western Australia were moved to Darwin, after it closed down. It was at a time when many Aboriginal people who were thought to have leprosy or other infectious diseases were sent to lock hospitals and leprosariums under the Aborigines Act 1905, which gave the Chief Protector of Aborigines powers to arrest and send any Indigenous person suspected of having a range of diseases to one of these institutions.
Around 10,000 Australian and other Allied troops arrived in Darwin at the outset of World War II to defend Australia's northern coast. On 19 February 1942 at 9:57 am, 188 Japanese warplanes attacked Darwin in two waves. It was the same fleet that had bombed Pearl Harbor, though considerably more bombs were dropped on Darwin than on Pearl Harbor. The attack killed at least 243 people and caused immense damage to the town, airfields, and aircraft. These were by far the most serious attacks on Australia in time of war, in terms of fatalities and damage. They were the first of many raids on Darwin.
Darwin Chinatown which lay within the heart of Darwin was razed to the ground by the Japanese bombing and was never rebuilt. Northern Territory administrator Aubrey Abbott wanted to eliminate the Chinese community and forcibly seized their land as it was considered prime real estate.
Darwin was further developed after the war, with sealed roads constructed connecting the region to Alice Springs to the south and Mount Isa to the southeast, and Manton Dam built in the south to provide the city with water. On Australia Day (26 January) 1959, Darwin was granted city status.
On 25 December 1974, Darwin was struck by Cyclone Tracy, which killed 71 people and destroyed over 70% of the city's buildings, including many old stone buildings such as the Palmerston Town Hall, which could not withstand the lateral forces the winds generated. After the disaster, 30,000 of the population of 46,000 were evacuated in the biggest airlift in Australia's history. The town was rebuilt with newer materials and techniques during the late 1970s by the Darwin Reconstruction Commission, led by former Brisbane Lord mayor Clem Jones. In the early 1980s, a satellite city of Palmerston was built 20 km (12 mi) east of Darwin.
In September 2003, the Adelaide–Darwin railway was completed, with the opening of the Alice Springs–Darwin standard gauge line.
A 2003 saltwater crocodile attack south of the city was the inspiration for the 2007 film Black Water.
Darwin hosted many of aviation's early pioneers. On 10 December 1919, Captain Ross Smith and his crew landed in Darwin and won a £10,000 prize from the Australian government for completing the first flight from London to Australia in under 30 days. Smith and his crew flew a Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU, and landed on an airstrip that has become Ross Smith Avenue.
Other aviation pioneers include Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Bert Hinkler. The original QANTAS Empire Airways Ltd Hangar, a registered heritage site, was part of the original Darwin Civil Aerodrome in Parap and is now a museum that still bears scars from the bombing of Darwin during World War II.
Darwin was home to Australian and U.S. pilots during the war, with airstrips built in and around Darwin. Today Darwin provides a staging ground for military exercises.
Darwin was a compulsory stopover and checkpoint in the London-to-Melbourne Centenary Air Race in 1934. The official name of the race was the MacRobertson Air Race. Winners of the race were Tom Campbell Black and C. W. A. Scott.
The following is an excerpt from Time magazine, 29 October 1934:
Third Day. Biggest sensation of the race came just before dawn on the third day, when burly Lieutenant Scott and dapper Captain Black flew their scarlet Comet into Darwin. They had covered the last 300 miles [480 km] over water on one motor, risked death landing on a field made soggy by the first rain in seven months. Said sandy-haired Lieutenant Scott: "We've had a devil of a trip." But they had flown 9000 miles [14000 km] in two days, had broken the England to Australia record of 162 hr. in the unbelievable time of 52hr. 33 min., were only 2000 miles [3200 km] from their goal at Melbourne.
The Darwin Aviation Museum is about 8 km (5 mi) from the city centre on the Stuart Highway and is one of only three places outside the United States where a B-52 bomber (on permanent loan from the United States Air Force) is on public display.
Darwin is a coastal city, situated along the western shoreline of the Northern Territory. The water meets the land from the Beagle Gulf, which extends out into the Timor Sea. The central business district occupies a low bluff overlooking Darwin Harbour to the south, beyond which lie East Arm, Middle Arm, Northern Territory, and, across the gulf, West Arm. Middle Arm has an industrial precinct on the peninsula, which is being promoted as a sustainable development area that will include plants for industries such as low-emission petrochemicals, renewable hydrogen, and carbon capture storage. Darwin is flanked by Frances Bay to the east and Cullen Bay to the west.
The rest of the city is relatively flat and low-lying, and areas bordering the coast are home to recreational reserves, extensive beaches, and excellent fishing.
Darwin and its suburbs spread in an approximately triangular shape, with the older southwestern suburbs—and the city itself—forming one corner, the newer northern suburbs another, and the eastern suburbs, progressing towards Palmerston, forming the third.
The older part of Darwin is separated from the newer northern suburbs by Darwin International Airport and RAAF Base Darwin. Palmerston is a satellite city 20 km (12 mi) east of Darwin that was established in the 1980s and is one of Australia's fastest-growing municipalities. Darwin's rural areas, including Howard Springs, Humpty Doo and Berry Springs, are experiencing strong growth.
Darwin's central business district (CBD) is bounded by Daly Street in the northwest, McMinn Street in the northeast, Mitchell Street on the southwest, and Bennett Street on the southeast. The CBD has been the focus of a number of major projects, such as the billion-dollar redevelopment of the Stokes Hill wharf waterfront area, including a convention centre with seating for 1,500 people and approximately 4,000 square metres (43,000 sq ft) of exhibition space. The developers announced that this includes hotels, residential apartments, and public space. The city's main industrial areas are along the Stuart Highway toward Palmerston, centred on Winnellie. The area's largest shopping precinct is Casuarina Square.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Darwin, Northern Territory”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.