Waiting for a bus back into town from the Parap market, a middle-aged Aboriginal woman ascertains that I’m not from Darwin. She fills me in on a little of the recent history of the frontier town that became a state capital.
“All the rich people live out at Cullen Point now,” she says. “When I was a girl that’s where we used to hunt mussels. We saw them building all the big houses and we laughed and said the mozzies will drive away the rich folk soon enough. But they are still there and they are building more houses, bigger and fancier than ever.”
It is said with resignation rather than bitterness. Anybody who has lived in Darwin for any stretch of time comes to accept that it is constantly changing. For decades it insisted on putting a belligerent Anglo-Australian face into the tropics and defying the climate. More recently it has begun to accept that geographically and climatically it is an addendum to southeast Asia. It will be happier for it.
The astounding Ghan railway, crossing Australia from Adelaide in the south, past Alice Springs and through the desert, finally reached Darwin last year. The rail link is welcome, but no longer the life-changing innovation it might have been 20 years ago. Instead it’s just another tourist attraction to add to a long list.
First, though, Darwin has a bit of a reputation to live down. As the furthest-flung colonial outpost in Australia, it was a town for the unwilling; public servants forced to do a couple of years up north as a kind of civil service equivalent of conscription.
For decades it was propped up by federal cash, and kept viable by a considerable military presence. Australians never forget it was bombed by the Japanese in the second world war, and like to keep their armed forces there as a reminder.
Accordingly, Darwin developed a drinking culture that was ferocious, even by Australian standards. This was a kind of antipodean Graham Greene milieu, the colonial servants slugging 14 cold stubbies instead of a melancholy Singapore sling, while shrivelling in the topics.
That atmosphere has changed, although not completely. Downtown Darwin remains reassuringly small. The main drag of Mitchell Street essentially caters for the backpacking crowd, stopping off en route to the spectacular wilderness of the Top End and Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
Australians are the world leaders in backpacker infrastructure, and the street has every internet cafe, cheap hostel, banana-pancake breakfast joint and cheap beer promotion you would expect. The pubs, blessed with no-nonsense names such as Ducks Nuts or Rorke’s Drift, have mellowed considerably in recent years. If Darwin’s beery exuberance can still get a bit over the top, it is nothing compared with, say, a Scottish town centre on a Friday night.
Backpackers will remain the town’s core tourist market for a while, although there are signs that Darwin is courting a more affluent clientele, particularly now direct flights to Singapore have been restored.
The tackier tourist souvenirs (beer-can chillers shaped like kangaroos, crocodile-jaw caps) are giving way to purveyors of “Australiana”. This word affects a cultural hauteur, although in practice it seems to cover everything from colonial era paraphernalia to Aboriginal artefacts.
It’s an easy walk west from Mitchell Street past the casino (locals still proudly point it out as the hub of entertainment) to the broad, breezy expanse of Mindil beach, and beyond to the botanic gardens. These offer welcome shade under the palms when the heat of the dry season gets uncomfortably intense.
The weather in Darwin, the desiccating, relentless dry season, the remorseless wet, has always been something to moan about, but three decades ago, it took an extreme weather phenomenon to reshape Darwin’s future.
The city’s turning point between a century of colonial denial and a more open-minded modernity came on Christmas Day 1974 when Cyclone Tracy levelled the scruffy settlement. Traumatic in the short term (there were 66 fatalities, remarkably few considering the scale of devastation), the disaster allowed the city to rethink and rebuild. A fascinating exhibition at the Museum of the Northern Territory offers a vivid picture of what it was like for locals to see their town literally blown away.
The museum also has space for an impressive exhibition of maritime craft, featuring the kind of outriggers and canoes that braved the waters with cargos of refugees from southeast Asia. It’s a reminder that Indonesian settlements are rather closer to Darwin than Sydney or Canberra. Bali is only a two-hour flight away, while Singapore is a mere four hours. In terms of Australian distances that almost equates to commuting.
As you walk back from the museum, you get a whiff of lemongrass and ginger coming from the beach-front field kitchens The new Asian Darwin is at its most apparent at the Mindil beach market. This is where the tourists meet the locals and mingle in front of the bay as the tropical sun sinks red beyond the waves.
Spicy curries, Malaysian laksas, Singapore noodles and Cambodian, Timorese and Vietnamese delicacies scent the sea air as ad hoc groups play drums and didgeridoos, and New Age types try the soft sell with crafts and jewellery. The atmosphere is decidedly mellow.
One local suggests that this is the next-generation Darwin. Previously the town offered a feeble pretence at being just another part of white Australia. Now the population has an average age of only 28, and there is more willingness to absorb the indigenous Aboriginal culture and to look to Asia rather than Europe for cultural influences.
Without the culinary pretensions and posturing of Sydney or Melbourne, Darwin might well be the best-fed town in Australia, now it has rejected the old pie and peas diet of the original settlers. There is a preponderance of elegant and inexpensive restaurants in Darwin making use of the plentiful local seafood and the inspirational Asian culinary influence.
“Modern Australian” is the patriotic if inaccurate description used for a cuisine accentuating the fresh, piquant flavours of the East. At places such as the Waterhole or E’Voo you’ll get discreet formality and fine dining.
The crowds, though, gravitate towards the seafood places by Cullen Bay marina. Yots cafe has been around for a decade or so, and has become a firm favourite, mostly with Darwin bohemians lunching on fresh oysters. Pee Wees is just as popular, spicing up local barramundi or scallops with lime zest and pawpaw salad.
The markets and the cafes are the firmest indication of Darwin’s adjustment to reality as they edge firmly towards the aromatic chaos of Asia. At Rapid Creek on Sunday you can rummage for second-hand bargains, while Nightcliff sells indigenous music, flea-market clothing and art. Everybody seems to have some creative venture in development, from Thai cafes to juice stands.
This is where Darwin’s progressive generation are finding a new identity for their town. The rich folk might be building their condos at Cullen Point and getting their mussels in the exclusive restaurants, but Darwin is never going to be chic. Instead, within a couple of years, it might just find itself turning into the vibrant Asian rim city of its 21st-century aspirations.
Details: Fly with Austravel (0870 166 2020, www.austravel.com) from Edinburgh or Glasgow to Darwin from £555 return.
Saville Park Suites (www.savillesuites.com.au) has suites and apartments with kitchen facilities from about £90 for a double.
Find more information on Darwin at www.travelnt.com
