Expedition led by George Goyder

Darwin’s birth officially began in 1839 when Captain J C Wickham first sailed into the harbour from Victoria. Onboard the HMS Beagle in early September, Wickham entered what would later be Darwins Harbour and from that vantage point, an officer by the name of John Stokes took a small whaler and was the first known European to land on Darwin soil. He named the harbour Port Darwin after the young naturalist, Charles Darwin, who sailed on the Beagles voyage around the world between the years 1832 and 1836.

On the 14th of September exploring parties disembarked the beagle and began the job of discovering the area. They were very impressed with what they found. Marsden Horden wrote in his study of Stokes:

 “From the Beagle’s deck they watched the sun rise in a clear sky above a hill .. At noon with the temperature hovering around 80 degrees, they welcome a refreshing breeze which ruffled the water and set the branches waving on the trees. And at nightfall, they enjoyed a feast of colour: the sun, dipping over the harbour’s westward point, brushing a few wispy clouds near the horizon with the delicate pink of a rainbow trout before dropping quickly like molten iron into the Timor Sea. Then the last of the sea breeze and the splash of wavelets on the shore heralded a night full of stars, with the cross lying low in the southern sky (Hordern 1989, 171)."

However, it was not until another 2 decades had passed, that Europeans established a permanent settlement at Port Darwin. On the 6th of July 1863 South Australia decided to incorporate the Northern Territory. It was at Escape Cliffs during the year 1864 that this first attempt at colonization was to take place. However, this first settlement was abandoned after just a couple of years due to the poor location which was surrounded by mangroves. 

It was not until 1868 that George Goyder, surveyor General of South Australia, was commissioned to travel to the Northern Territory in the aim of finding a good location in which to build a permanent settlement. Leaving with a well-equipped party, Goyder and his men headed for Port Darwin and from from February to September 1869 camped near Fort Hill. It was here that they carefully planned and laided out a new town to be built and named is Palmerston. Many of the street names, which can be seen today, such as Smith and Knuckey commemorate the surveyors involved.