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Darwin, Australia
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory. More than 100 000 people live in the city. The city covers an area of 1660 square kilometres and is built around Darwin Harbour in the Beagle Gulf on the
Timor Sea.
Darwin Harbour
The first people to live in the area were the Aboriginal people. They had occupied the land for thousands of years before European settlers arrived. The Larrakia people lived on the land in the Darwin area. They lived by hunting and fishing.
European settlement began in 1860s and at first the different groups got on well and sometimes the Aborigines worked for Europeans. However as more and more Europeans arrived the Aboriginal camps were destroyed the Aboriginal people were moved away from the town.
The city was officially named in 1839
after Charles Darwin, an explorer, naturalist (he studied plants
and animals) and writer.
Today, the city is run by a city council, elected by the people of the city. A Lord Mayor leads the city council. The Parliament of the Northern Territory is in Darwin.
Most of Darwin
has been re-built since the disaster of 
1974, when Cyclone Tracy destroyed it. In the city there are modern
offices, shops and shopping centres, hotels, hospitals and schools.
There are many parks and tropical gardens and there are many fine beaches close to the city.
The weather in Darwin is tropical, which means it is hot and wet. There are just two seasons, the 'wet' from November to March and the 'dry' from April to November. During the wet season strong winds called monsoons bring heavy rain and the weather is humid. Average temperatures are from 24C to 32C. During the dry season the weather is warm and dry with temperatures ranging from 19C to 30C.
Darwin is closer to the cities of many Asian countries than it is to many of the southern cities of Australia. The population is multi-cultural with people of more than 40 different nationalities living together with the Australian Aborigines and Australian born people.
Crocodile farming and fish farming are two of the city's industries. Thousands of people of the Australian Defence Forces are based in Darwin.
You can read about who lives in Darwin and about the work they do here
http://www.id.com.au/darwin/commprofile/Default.asp?bhcp=1
If you use any
of this information in your own work acknowledge this source in
your bibliography like this:
Darwin,
Australia (2001).
[Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au
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updated January 2007