Places to visit in Australia

Darwin In A Nutshell

A commonly-asked question: What’s it like to live and work in a tropical paradise? The answer: Come to Darwin and find out. This city is the capital of the Northern Territory of Australia. The population has just reached 100,000 mainly thanks to the mining boom. As Australia’s “Gateway to Asia”, Darwin sees a steady stream of ships and aircraft carrying goods and passengers between here and Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines and China. Apart from the burgeoning trade in raw materials with South-East Asian nations, Darwin is the residential hub and services centre for the resurgent mining industry.

The city enjoys a relaxed, informal lifestyle. Mitchell Street, in the Central Business District, is the hub of a high-energy nightlife which never runs out of gas. Partygoers can be seen leaving the nightclubs at 4 o’clock in the morning. One advantage of the compact size of the city, is that it’s very easy to transit from one entertainment venue to another. A good, old-fashioned pub crawl is well within the capabilities of any person of average fitness. Good food and plenty of it is available at all the pubs in town. The beer, of course, is always ice-cold; and an army of transient backpackers, building up their funds for the next stage of their odyssey, work tirelessly behind the counters.

Traffic is well-organised and fairly stress-free. The city itself, unlike Sydney or Brisbane, has very few steep hills, and the infrastructure was built from scratch after the devastation wrought by Cyclone Tracy in December 1974. Very little remains of the lightweight structures which formed most of Darwin’s buildings in those days. Subjected to wind gusts recorded at 300kms/hr (the anemometers disintegrated under the pressure, so wind gusts were probably in excess of this figure), the town was literally flattened. All new buildings since then have had to comply with strict building codes, to ensure their integrity under such conditions.

Cyclones are a feature of the Wet Season, from mid-November to the end of March. This is followed by the Dry Season (April end of July), in which the humidity of the monsoon disappears; rainfall ceases; refreshing sea-breezes blow away the cobwebs, and suburban dwellers and tourists alike head for the National Parks. Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks are only a couple of hours’ drive from the CBD, and as the water levels drop, the picnic and camping areas become accessible