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 has never been there although he has 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 Garuda and Singapore 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.
In World War II, Darwin suffered air attacks from Japanese Zeroes and is the only Australian city to take some brunt of the Pacific War.
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