Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Conflict marked the arrival of European cattle farmers across central Australia. The
Arrernte (
uh
-rahn-da) people defended their lands and spiritual heritage, spearing cattle
for food as farmers had destroyed many of their hunting grounds. In return, those water-
holes not already ruined by cattle were poisoned, and reprisal raids saw many massacres.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
In 2005, making way for the billion-dollar Darwin City Waterfront development,
Darwin Harbour was dredged for unexploded Japanese bombs. The harbour was
peppered with 60kg bombs during WWII, sinking eight ships and damaging many
more. Some estimates placed 160 unexploded bombs lying latent at the bottom of
the harbour.
With the developers wringing nervous hands, scans detected 230 metal chunks
in the mud. Disposal experts were called in, but turned up little more than a brass
fuse, a Chinese jug and some remnants of the sunken ship MV Neptuna. No
bombs, but we suggest you don't go poking around in the sludge…
Immigration & Exploration
The first immigrants to SA were poor, young English, Scots and Irish. About 12,000
landed in the first four years of settlement, followed by 800 German farmers and artisans
between 1838 and 1841 - mainly Lutherans fleeing religious persecution. Around 5400
more Germans arrived by 1850; many more followed during the next decade. They
settled mainly in the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa Valley, their vineyards forming the
beginning of the SA wine industry. Thousands of Cornish people also came to SA fol-
lowing the discovery of copper in the 1840s, many of them jumping ship to Victoria in
the 1850s when gold was discovered there.
In the NT, the discovery of gold and copper south of Darwin (then Palmerston) attrac-
ted miners, and settlers with cattle moved into the NT from SA and northern Queensland.
In 1877 the first Lutheran mission was established at Hermannsburg; Catholic and Meth-
odist missions followed elsewhere.
Successive waves of immigration fuelled the search for new arable land. Between
1839 and 1841 Edward John Eyre made the first traverse of the Flinders Ranges in SA.
In 1839, Charles Bonney drove the first herd of cattle from Melbourne to Adelaide via
Mt Gambier.
Five years later, Charles Sturt set off from Adelaide towing a whaleboat to find the
mythical central Australian inland sea, but after 18 months of hardship he abandoned it
