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Far in the north of Australia lies a little-known land, a vast half-finished sort of region, wherein Nature has been apparently practising how to make better places. This is the Northern Territory of South Australia... The decline and fall of the British Empire will date from the day that Britannia starts to monkey with the Northern
Territory, with Darwin as a capital. This rather ominous prophecy by the bush balladeer "Banjo" Paterson, author of "Waltzing Matilda", is still the way many Australians view the frontier lands of the Northern Territory, usually known as "The Territory", or simply "NT". Even the name conjures up a distant, untamed province and, to an extent, it really is like this: just one percent of Australians (170,000) live here, in an area covering nearly twenty percent of the continent. This tiny population and lack of economic autonomy explains why The Territory has never achieved full statehood, only gaining self-government from Canberra in 1978.
Things got off to a good start with the arrival in 1872 of the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL), following the route pioneered by explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1862, that finally linked Australia with the rest of the world. Gold was discovered at Pine Creek while pylons were being erected for the OTL, prompting the inevitable
gold rush, and the construction of a southbound railway. After the gold rush subsided, a cyclone flattened the depressed town in 1897, but by 1911, when Darwin adopted its present name, the rough-and-ready frontier outpost had grown into a small government centre, servicing the mines and properties of the Top End. In 1942, just five years after a second cyclone had razed the town, repeated Japanese air raids destroyed Darwin yet again - this time at a human cost of hundreds of lives (a fact concealed for years from the jittery nation). The fear of invasion, and an urgent need to get troops to the war zone, led to the swift construction of the Stuart Highway, the first reliable land link between Darwin and the rest of the country. Three decades of guarded post-war prosperity followed until Christmas Day, 1974, when Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin. For many residents this trauma was the last straw and having been evacuated they never returned. Indeed, the myth of Darwinian resilience is just that: the town has always accommodated a transient, easy-going population, happy to "give it a go" for a couple of years and then move on. The surrounding land is agriculturally unviable and Top End beef (an industry hampered by disease-eradication programmes and foreign competition) is among the poorest in Australia; most beef is exported as live cattle to Asia.
World War II put Darwin permanently on the map when the town became an important base for Allied action against the Japanese in the Pacific. The road south to the railhead at Alice Springs was surfaced, finally putting the city in direct contact with the rest of the country. Darwin was attacked 64 times during the war and 243 people lost their lives; it was the only place in Australia to suffer prolonged attack. |
Territorians relish their tough, maverick image, as well as the extremes of climate, distance and isolation that mould their temperaments. In this utmost corner of the country, drifters get washed up, fugitives cower and failed entrepreneurs pursue another abortive venture or become politicians. That great Australian institution of the "character" is in its element here, propping up the bars and bolstering the mythology of The Territory's recent lawless frontier history in what Xavier Herbert once described as the "Land of Ratbags". His classic 1938 novel, Capricornia, remains a scathing allegorical saga of the early Territorian years, based on Herbert's experience in 1930s' Darwin. Establishing a European settlement on Australia's remote northern shores was never going to be easy. It took four abortive attempts over a period of 45 years before Darwin (originally called Palmerston) was surveyed in 1869 by the new South Australian state keen to exploit its recently acquired "northern territory". The early colonists' aim was to pre-empt foreign occupation and create a trading post, a "new Singapore", for the British Empire. Darwin's growth was accelerated by the discovery of gold at Pine Creek, about 200km (124mi) south, in 1871. But once the gold fever had run its course Darwin's development slowed down, due to the harsh, unpredictable climate (including occasional cyclones) and poor communications with other Australian cities. By the early 20th century, most of the Aboriginal people who had inhabited the land which had become Darwin were confined to government reserves or Christian missions, or were living on cattle stations working as stockmen or domestic help.