Day 64: Darwin - City Of Heat, Crocs And Disasters

 

Right, no awards for guessing how the city of Darwin got its name. On 9 September 1839, HMS Beagle sailed into Darwin Harbour to survey the area. John Clements Wickham named the region "Port Darwin" in honour of their former shipmate Charles Darwin, who had sailed with them on the ship's previous voyage. Darwin had already left to start working on promoting his findings and eventually writing his famous book. Some politicians got involved, and the settlement there became the town of Palmerston in 1869, after the British Prime Minister, but was renamed Darwin in 1911. (There is now a suburb named Palmerston instead!) 

 The Northern Territory is Australia's most sparsely populated area, and Darwin is the largest town with a population of 140,000. However, it got off to a shaky start. In 1863, the Territory was transferred from New South Wales to Southern Australia. The following year, the SA government sent an exploration and settlement party up north. They refused to locate in the most obvious place at the mouth of the Adelaide River and instead settled 50 miles away. It was a disaster. Politicians at their best! In 1869, another small settlement started at the site of the current-day city. It thrived, and by the following year, telegraphy poles were erected to connect them with the rest of the country (and the world). 

Darwin is somewhat unique in that it has almost been wiped off the face of the map four times in its 160-year history. Two major cyclones devastated the city in 1897 and 1937. The 1897 storm destroyed over 90% of the structures, and the inhabitants sheltered in the stone courthouse and banks. Then in 1942, the Japanese launched a series of bombing raids and flattened the city. It was a worse attack than Pearl Harbour. The influx of soldiers and military spending got the city back on its feet, and all was well until Christmas Eve, 1974. Then Cyclone Tracy hit and again laid waste to Darwin. It was a Category 4 storm only because the anemometer broke before recording higher wind speeds. 

Darwin's other claim to fame is through aviation. It still has a massive Air Force 
presence (the local civilian airport is shared with the military, and air traffic control is under military command.) It was a mandatory stop for round-the-world and London-to-Australia flights, hosting 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, and landed on an airstrip that is now Ross Smith Avenue. (We drove on it this afternoon!) 

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 and is now a museum that still bears scars from the bombing of Darwin during World War II. 

And what did we do? We ventured 30-40 miles up the Adelaide River to go Croc Hunting and see the leaping Crocodiles. This was very low-tech, super-tourist fun. You go out onto the River in a "large-enough" boat with a guide and a crocodile fisher. The fisher loads up a pole with chicken parts and dangles it over the side of the boat. ("No hands or feet or small children outside the boat") A "large-enough" (10 to 16 foot) croc lazily swims over and waits until it thinks it can leap and get the chicken. It's a game of cat-and-mouse played between a human, a croc, and a dead chicken. 

The salt-water crocodile times its leap and goes for the chicken parts. Since crocs have a reaction speed 35x that of humans, it requires impressive timing for the fisherman to pull the chicken out of reach. The results are quite spectacular. The whole thing is run in a National Park with the eco-blessing of local authorities, and the chicken is a supplement to the diet of the crocs, and doesn't form their entire menu. The largest crocs can still take down a water buffalo for dinner.

Overall, it was a fun day. Because of an unfortunate auto crash, we had to take a diversion to get to the park, so we saw a lot of the hinterlands behind Darwin and less of the highway, which was a win, too.

Tomorrow is Sea Day in the Sea of Timor, and we're heading to Indonesia. Our first stop is Komodo, where we'll see the Dragons!

Below/

A> Tempting Fate ..

B> Another leap

C> Yet another leap.

This trip was enjoyable as I used my phone for the first few minutes to get the shots. Then, I put it away and just sat and enjoyed the action as it happened. Almost everyone else still had their phones in front of their faces for the entire 90 minutes. What have we turned into??