Fort Dundas was the first outpost of Europeans in Australia's north. It was a British fortification manned by soldiers, marines and convicts, and built by them on remote Melville Island in 1824. It lasted until February, 1829, when it was abandoned and left to the termites.The fort's purpose was twofold. Firstly, it was a physical demonstration of Britain's claim to the New Holland continent as far as longitude 129E, which excluded the Dutch and the French from starting similar col...

For many of the Royal Marines sent to Port Essington, life was a living hell of malaria, scurvy, termites, shipwrecks, cyclones, boredom, isolation and death. For one man, it was the 'most useless, ill-managed hold in Her Majesty's dominions' which deserved 'all the abuse that has ever been heaped upon it'.But it wasn't always so: in the beginning, French visitors shared their best Bordeaux wines and partied at Government House; small boats raced in regattas across the harbour; men ...

What does it mean to live in a place no one else believed in? Then known as Palmerston, Darwin at the dawn of the 20th century was a remote and volatile frontier town considered a white elephant by its distant government. Cyclones raged, supplies were scarce, and the promised railway never came. But despite the struggles, many Territorians chose to stay, clinging to the boundless possibilities they believed in - if only the Commonwealth would take control and build the railway. Northern Te...

Ten men were legally executed in Australia's Northern Territory.Some were hanged on their own Country, their deaths intended as warnings. Others were buried behind the walls of Darwin's Fannie Bay Gaol in unmarked graves and forgotten.They were Indigenous tribesmen, Chinese gold miners, and European refugees. Their crimes, trials, and punishments unfolded in a frontier society shaped by race, fear, and power - yet their stories have largely vanished from the national memory.

The last decade of the nineteenth century was a tough time for South Australia's Top End settlement of Palmerston. The major industries of mining, pastoralism, and agriculture suffered from downturn, disease and distance. The South Australians had had enough of their 'white elephant' and, when Palmerston blew away in the Great Hurricane of 1897, the calls for the Northern Territory's return to the British Colonial Government grew louder.But the Territory, as ever, was full of resili...

This is a true story of greed, courage, exploration, murder, wasted efforts, life and death struggles, insubordination, incredible seamanship, and extraordinary bushmanship, amid government bungling and Aboriginal resistance, during South Australia's first attempt at colonising their Northern Territory in 1864.The South Australians wanted their state to be the premier state of Australia. The new settlement was expected to open up a trading route across the country to Asia a...

The Iwaidja woman, her belly opened by a bayonet, slipped below the dark water. Her 6-year-old daughter, Reveral, watched in terror. Her baby sister was already dead, hit by a slug in the first volley or drowned, but a young man lying on the sand with his intestines spilling out had to be finished off - out of mercy! Reveral, wounded in her side, was carried back to the fort in triumph, for she was worth a £5 reward from Commandant Smyth.Capturing an Australian was how the British s...

Darwin, the unique and vibrant city in Australia's tropical north, was almost stillborn. The Northern Territory had its beginnings under the governance of South Australia. Land was sold to investors, unseen and unsurveyed and in an unknown location. The sales raised the funds needed to found the new colony of Palmerston, the future capital of the Northern Territory of South Australia. The First Northern Territory Expedition was sent north to make it a reality. But it failed miserably and t...

In the best tradition of Paul Theroux and J. Maarten Troost, comes Derek Pugh's torrid tale of Sumbawa, and his ascent of the iconic volcano Mt. Tambora, whose 1815 eruption did indeed change the world.Pugh's account of the eruption and its aftermath is masterfully done - clearly the product of much dogged research through archives, scientific journals, as well as conversations with Indonesians lasting long into the steamy night.Himself a long-time resident of the neighbori...

Accompanied by Turkey, his little 'hunting' dog, Derek Pugh founded several outstation schools in the most remote parts of Arnhem Land and gained a rare insight into a traditional way of life which has been witnessed by only a few outsiders.By turns reflective, tragic and hilarious, Turn Left at the Devil Tree is a memoir of a visiting teacher among the Indigenous people and wildlife of the Top End of Australia. It is also a history - revealing some little known and disturbing even...

A crocodile pulls a sleeping man into the river by one leg. Another breaks the neck of a swimming policeman. An out-of-luck miner drowns himself in the town's well.Once called Palmerston, the City of Darwin began in the 1870s. Darwin was a pioneer's paradise: sometimes as exciting as it was dull, full of potential but, too often, dangerous. Not everyone survived.The first settlers arrived in January 1870 to find very little other than surveyed blocks of bushland sold to dis...

In 1886, a notorious gang of horsemen wreaked havoc on the Overlanders' Trail that stretched across the Northern Territory into the wild Kimberley region. They stole cattle with audacity, brazenly held up pubs and cattle stations, and drove a herd of stolen horses with unmatched daring. As part of the Halls Creek goldrush, these men became infamous as the Ragged Thirteen.Dubbed by some as the 'Tea and Sugar Bushrangers' and by others as 'the scum of the four colonies, fugitives from...