The Destruction of Darwin - for the third time
Tracy destroyed Darwin in one night. Now a slower more insidious decline has begun.
Darwin will be the final settlement in the Northern Territory to perish. At present we are witnessing the demise of Alice Springs and Katherine, major settlements to the south of Darwin.
The contagion of violence, and alcohol abuse, theft and child poverty has stunned the media and the people of Australia.
There have been three attempts to destroy Darwin in the last 150 years since it was founded. We are now living through the third of these.
Australians have a blind spot for Darwin. Less than 1% of Australian tourists visit the Northern Territory. The rest of the population knows little about the place.
Surveys of Australian children have consistently demonstrated there is a lack of knowledge about how their country is governed. This is the poorest when it comes to their knowledge about the government of Darwin and the Northern territory. For example, most people are unaware that the Northern Territory is not a state.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that Darwin is the only capital city in Australia whose population is in decline. The Northern Territory and Darwin have the fewest number of visitors of any state or territory.
People are missing out on something. The city has the most original and exotic mixture of cultures in the country. The Macassar people from Indonesia have been sailing there for the last three hundred years trading with the Larrakia people for trepang or sea cucumber, a delicacy in their cuisine. Indonesian and Malay influences are evident everywhere, in the dress, the music, and the food. There are also Torres Strait people and Filipinos who bring their own unique mix of music and diet.
The most striking culture of all and not as evident anywhere else in Australia is that of the Indigenous people. Their art, music, dress, and customs are undiluted and striking against the red-ochre landscape and tropical vegetation of the Northern Territory. The sheer number of local people who participate in their festivals and gatherings has no equal anywhere else on the continent.
The local indigenous people are friendly and seem much more welcoming than elsewhere and the visitor is reminded of what has been lost in that mix of indigenous cultures to the rest of the country.
It is at the Mindil Beach Sunset markets held every Thursday for six months of the year that the mix of cultures in Darwin comes together. Mindil means sweet nutgrass in the local language. Under the yellow ball of the setting sun hundreds of stalls selling artwork, food and handicrafts are set up on the beach will musical artists indigenous and Asian perform. The suling and gamelan, instruments from Indonesia compete with guitar players from the Philippines and the local didgeridoos and bilma or clapsticks. These markets distill the unique atmosphere of Darwin.
Darwin was comprehensively demolished twice in the last one hundred and fifty years since it was founded. On the first occasion, Japanese warplanes destroyed much of the town and the harbor in February 1942 killing 243 people. Not only was the news of the bombing kept from the Australian people at the time, the history of Australia’s “Pearl Harbor” was not taught in school.
During the second world war, the seriousness of the Japanese attempts to directly attack and destroy parts of Australia was not appreciated by its people. For example, Townsville and Sydney were bombed and the Japanese landed an invasion force in Western Australia, yet the Darwin bombing was far more serious. Still, schoolchildren know little about this.
In 1974 Darwin was destroyed again when Cyclone Tracy demolished 80% of the city and 71 people were killed. For a time the city of Darwin and its surroundings became the focus of news bulletins around the world. 250,000 people were made homeless, and the city had to be rebuilt.
It was not long before the city again faded from the public consciousness and even now, when Darwin is mentioned, people think immediately about Cyclone Tracy but know little else.
Having survived these two disasters we now face a third more insidious one, fueled this time by alcohol, alcohol-related child abuse, and domestic violence. We have been through all this before when the Federal Government intervened in the Northern Territory after the publication of the Commission into Child Abuse known and subtitled “Little Children are sacred.” In 2007, a report revealed the shocking mistreatment of children in aboriginal settlements.
Widespread bans on alcohol and pornography were enforced initially by defense force personnel and then later by the local police. These measures were to continue until 2012. The intervention was widely criticized by academics because of a failure to consult indigenous people and because of the draconian bans. Nonetheless, when the Liberal Government was ousted the Labor party continued the bans and restrictions because many indigenous people called for their continuation for a further 10 years till 2022.
As the time came for the intervention to end and restrictions on alcohol were removed there was a plea from local people, indigenous and white to continue them, especially in Alice Springs in the center of the country. Problems began even before the end of the intervention in 2022 and already life was becoming harder in all the major towns and settlements but with the lifting of these bans, the situation grew out of control.
Shop owners in Katherine were sleeping on their premises to prevent theft and food and entertainment outlets in Darwin were beginning to close because of frequent attacks, vandalism, and robbery. In Darwin, the Virginia Tavern and Monte’s bar, both popular nightspots, closed because of the break-ins and damage.
I had spent some time in the nineties in the Northern Territory giving medico-legal advice and with the army in the rugged hinterland around Katherine and the Kakadu National Park. The latter is one of this country’s finest wilderness treasures. In Darwin, we used to frequent the restaurant Hanuman whose chef Jimmy Shu was a master at the amalgam of Asian and Australian cuisine.
Now unsustainable, Hanuman has reduced its hours and will soon close because of constant break-ins.
Finally, stories of violence, street gangs, and the destruction of property have now begun to find their way into the national media. The governments of the Northern Territory and Australia have been well aware of what has been happening for six months but have done nothing.
It was their policies which had brought the disaster about in the first place. With the media crying out, they could no longer afford to ignore it. They also realized that the referendum to change the Constitution of Australia known as “The Voice to Parliament” would be impacted because the public might conclude that those who would be appointed as the “voice” would be the very same people responsible for what is happening in the Northern Territory.
Furthermore, Indigenous representatives in the Northern Territory made their position known. The many millions spent on the referendum and the cost of setting up the “voice” could be used to improve the conditions of indigenous people in the Northern Territory.
Also, the advocates for constitutional change are unable to articulate how this “voice” will solve problems for the people.
The politicians who have flown into the town of Alice Springs to solve the problems there have not come up with solutions but are making absurd statements like, ‘long-term solutions are needed’ and ‘it will take a generation to bring about change’. This is newspeak for ‘there is no solution’.
Indigenous settlements outside major centers have few resources but strong bonds of kinships keep people living there although life is awful and there is nothing to do. Because of this people drink themselves to oblivion. The real sufferers of this are children who become victims of violence and sexual abuse and have no future. There is no education and no work so the cycle of poverty and abuse continues from generation to generation.
People need hope.
The Prime Minister has paid a whistle-stop visit to Alice Springs to tell the chief minister what a good job she is doing. “Keep it up, Natasha. You’re doing a sterling job.” He got her name wrong, It’s Tracy.