Unbounded wilderness - From its tropical North to the red deserts of its interior, this remote and thinly populated part of Australia offers a wide variety of landscapes and tourist attractions.
The Northern Territory became part of South Australia in 1863, with Palmerston--renamed Darwin in 1911--as its capital. A gold rush in 1874 led to a sudden influx of settlers. The post-colonial history of the Northern Territory has been characterized by steady progress in the face of difficult conditions. Darwin, its capital city, has twice been virtually destroyed: in 1942 by bombs from the Japanese navy planes, and in 1974 by Cyclone Tracy. Despite this--or perhaps because of it--the Northern Territory has maintained itself well, and has become one of the favorite travel destinations for millions of Australian tourists. Today the industries in this huge territory--it covers 1.35 million square km--produce numerous raw materials as well as beef, pearls, crocodile meat and fish for export to Asia. The roughly 190,000 citizens of the territory are friendly, if somewhat coarse and very conservative. Almost a quarter of the population is aborigines.
