CHAPTER XVIII 



THE PORT DARWIN DISTRICT 



I HAVE made three separate visits to Port Darwin, the 

 first being as long ago as 1870, when Palmerston was quite 

 a newly- founded township, being scarcely a twelvemonth 

 old. The vicissitudes of the northern settlements, and 

 attempted settlements, have been very great, even con- 

 sidering the trying experiences of Australian settlements 

 in general, which have almost always been such as to 

 demand extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice on the 

 part of the colonists ; but it is beyond my province to 

 narrate them here. As the point of contact of the great 

 British-Australian cable and the headquarters of the 

 equally great (from an Australian point of view, at any 

 rate) Overland-telegraph, Port Darwin has become a place 

 of the highest importance to the colonies; and Palmer- 

 ston's future is now as firmly established and sure as that 

 of Sydney or Adelaide. The township is a place of 

 telegraph-men and Chinamen, the latter especially ; 

 indeed, the population might truly be termed a yellow 

 one, for " John Chinaman," as he is locally called, is here 

 in thousands. Half the tradesmen and all the servants 

 are of Chinese nationality ; and the industrious men of the 

 celestial empire here perform all those offices which in an 

 English or refined Australian home invariably fall to the 

 lot of the lady of the house and her maids. Here the 

 white lady was a rare exotic at the times of all my visits, 

 the last of which, and the one referred to in this chapter, 

 took place in 1882. 



At the times I refer to, the " Northern Territory," as it 



