Darwin: Survival of a City, The 1890s

Derek Pugh brings the Darwin of the 1890s alive. (Hon Sally Thomas AC). In the 1890s, Darwin was in the doldrums. The town, then known as Palmerston, was succumbing to the worldwide depression with mining, pastoralism, and agriculture suffered from downturn, disease, and distance. The gold price plummeted and Redwater disease struck cattle - many pastoral operations closed. This is the story of South Australia's Top End settlement in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was a tough time, and the South Australian Government had had enough of their 'white elephant'. When Palmerston blew away in the Great Hurricane of 1897, many called for the Territory's return to the British Colonial Government. But the Territory, as ever, was full of resilient and resourceful characters. Many appear in these pages: judges, railway gangers, bushmen, murderers, buffalo hunters, hoteliers, Chinese miners, Aboriginal station hands, explorers, cross-country cyclists, and more. Territorians were, as Banjo Patterson described them, full of 'booze, blow and blasphemy' - but even he couldn't wait to get back there.