Darwin: Origin of a City

A crocodile pulls a sleeping man into the river by one leg. Another breaks the neck of a swimming policeman. An out-of-luck miner drowns himself in the town's well.

Once called Palmerston, the City of Darwin began in the 1870s. Darwin was a pioneer's paradise: sometimes as exciting as it was dull, full of potential but, too often, dangerous. Not everyone survived.

The first settlers arrived in January 1870 to find very little other than surveyed blocks of bushland sold to distant investors....