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Parliament House in Darwin
The city of Darwin was first named Port Darwin by John Lort Stokes , commander of the beagle , on the 9th of September 1839. Named after Charles Darwin , who had been a ship's companion on a previous voyage to South America. The Northern Territory had nominally been part of New South Wales , but in 1863 the British Government agreed to the annexation of the Northern Territory of South Australia. In 1869 when the South Australian Government sent George Goyder its Surveyor General , to survey a site north of Australia for settlement. The town plan is set out like a grid , styled from the city of Adelaide .The settlement was plagued by problems such as white ants eating much of the timber in buildings, the climate was difficult and unfamiliar , as well as many of the town folk not getting on well together . In 1870 the construction of overland telegraph line from port Augusta to Darwin , gold was discovered during construction and there was a minor gold rush. By 1890 the total non aboriginal population of the territory was 5366 of that 4141 were Chinese and 216 were Asian . By 1910 the non aboriginal population was down to 2846 only 1182 were European. Port Darwin was a collection of shacks situated along the Arafua Sea . The streets turned to mud during the wet season and during the dry was dust . The Town was very segregated during the turn of the century , it was in 1938 when a Chinese man bought a shop in a predominantly white area and succeeded that racial tension began to ease . With gold-mining , pearling , fishing , and cattle were the work of the day. The commonwealth took over government in the Territory in 1911 from South Australia. Between the two world wars the town developed slowly . In 1942 on the 19th of February, 188 Japanese planes attacked Darwin killing 243 people and destroying 400 shops as well as sinking 12 in the harbor. That was the first of 64 bombing attacks from the Japanese. Darwin had a slow recovery after the war years and on Christmas eve 1974 Darwin was hit by another tragedy that being cyclone Tracy hit the city with winds reaching 400 kilometers an hour it destroyed Darwin , killing 64 people and 30 000residents out of the total of 40 000 were evacuated in the days following the cyclone. Slowly the reconstruction of Darwin happened. 1978 brought in the self governing Northern Territory government and what you see today is a result of that government.
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