Notes on the Geography of Australia: Darwin

The home stretch--the last 200 miles. It's like two worlds, with Darwin being not only the biggest city in the Northern Territory but having an aura of wealth that comes as a shock after everything else. You'll see.

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First town out of Katherine: Pine Creek, a mining town that mines no more. Here's the Chinese-owned general store and Greyhound stop.

Blurry but you can feel the bit-of-this, bit-of-that atmosphere.

Bookstore, too.

Next door to the store, there's an old hotel built in the convenient, common, easy-to-take-apart-and-put-up-someplace-else mode suited to mining camps.

The hotel in its prime, 1912.

The town's former railway station.

An abandoned pit.

An old stamp mill.

The same, seen with the engine that drove it.

Details for the curious.

More, too.

A mixed-cargo road train.

The original highway, leading to another wartime airstrip.

The runway.

Details.

More details.

Roadside inn.

An alternative.

The north coast at last.

A shock, no? Downtown Darwin. The city has 120,000 people but feels bigger than that.

The downtown waterfront is still public. Scandalous! A few American property developers could fix that in a hurry.

A path down to the (rocky) beach.

Any guesses?

That was the seal on the gate of Government House, built in 1877.

Nearby, Parliament House is from the 1990s.

The old courthouse and police station, 1884.

Brown's Mart, 1885. Originally a warehouse, it's had many subsequent uses; since 1972 it's been the Browns Mart Theatre.

Ruins of the 1882 Town Hall, destroyed by Cyclone Tracy in 1977.

The Victoria Hotel, 1890.

Qantas, you remember, is an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service, so its presence here in the NT capital should be no surprise.

Details.

The military still has a strong presence in the city, too. Here, the Anzac Day parade, 2009.

Cyclone Tracy did huge damage to Darwin, which means that many, if not most, of the houses are new. Many are stylistically modern, too, as well as prudently on stilts.

A waterfront special.

A gardener's hideaway.

There are many residential high rises, this one boasting a bit of preserved facade.

Another view.

Many of the buildings have post-modern bits of color and/or swoosh.

The same.

Promotional billboard.

The Lameroo, on the waterfront at Lameroo Beach.

Who knows how such buildigns are named? This one, inscrutably, is called the Evolution on Gardiner.

Just in case you didn't believe me.

What do people in these apartments eat? Veggies, of course. Here's the selection at the local Woolworth's.