Darwin travel guide

Top 10 sights in Darwin

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© kenhodge13 · CC BY 2.0

   Charles Darwin National Park

   A mangrove park four kilometres southeast of Darwin, laid out over a wartime ammunition depot whose concrete bunkers are still in the bush. The lookout takes in the whole of Darwin harbour.

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   USS Peary

   An American destroyer sunk in Darwin harbour on 19 February 1942, in the first and heaviest Japanese air raid on Australia, with eighty-eight of her crew. One of her guns stands on East Point as a memorial, pointing out at the water she went down in.

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3. 

   3© Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

   The territory's museum and gallery at Bullocky Point, whose two most visited exhibits are Sweetheart, a five-metre saltwater crocodile that attacked boats in the 1970s, and a dark room in which the sound of Cyclone Tracy is played at full volume.

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4. 

   4© Torbenbrinker · CC BY-SA 4.0

   St Mary's Star of the Sea Cathedral

   The Catholic cathedral of Darwin, rebuilt in the mid twentieth century after the earlier church was damaged in the war. Its open sides and deep eaves are a response to the tropics rather than to European precedent.

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5. 

   5© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bicentennial Park

   Parkland running the length of the Esplanade above the harbour, from Parliament House to Doctors Gully. The memorials to the 1942 bombing raids are set along it, and the cliff path is the one shaded walk in the city centre.

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6. 

   6© Bidgee · CC BY 3.0

   George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens

   A botanical garden two kilometres north of the centre, one of the few in Australia to grow tropical species in the open. Cyclone Tracy destroyed almost all of it in 1974 and it was replanted from scratch.

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7. 

   7© Bidgee · CC BY 3.0

   Darwin Military Museum

   A museum at East Point built into the concrete emplacements of the wartime coastal battery, with an audiovisual account of the sixty-four raids Darwin took between 1942 and 1943 — a scale of attack the rest of Australia was not told about at the time.

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8. 

   8© Gnangarra · CC BY 2.5 au

   Mindil Beach

   A beach near the centre of Darwin, best known for the market that sets up on it from May to October. Thousands come for the food stalls and stay to watch the sun go down over the Timor Sea.

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9. 

   9© Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Lameroo Beach

   A small beach below the Esplanade that held the town's sea baths from 1922 until 1974, when Cyclone Tracy took them. The name comes from the Larrakia word for a spring, and the water is not swum in now because of crocodiles.

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10. 

    10© Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Darwin Aviation Museum

    An aviation museum at Winnellie whose centrepiece is a B-52 bomber on indefinite loan from the United States Air Force — one of very few outside America. A Japanese Zero recovered from the bush nearby is displayed as it was found.

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Popular tickets & tours in Darwin

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   Booya

   A steel three-masted schooner built in the Netherlands in 1917 and later used by the American army as a signals vessel. She sank in Darwin harbour during Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve 1974 with all hands; the wreck was found in 2003.

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   2© JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Lyons Cottage

   A stone bungalow of 1925 built for the British Australian Telegraph Company, whose cable to Java made Darwin the point where Australia connected to the world. It is among the oldest buildings left in the city centre, most of the rest having gone in 1942 or 1974.

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   3© MargaretRDonald · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Damoe-Ra Park

   A park below the parliament on the Darwin waterfront, designated in 1996 and named for the spring within it, which Larrakia women hold sacred. Its cliff-side path connects the centre to the harbour.

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