Geography Atlas

Where Everything Happened
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

City

Darwin

Australia and New Zealand

Darwin is the capital and largest city of Australia's Northern Territory, on the shore of Darwin Harbour, and the country's smallest, wettest and most northerly capital. It was founded in 1869 by surveyor George Goyder as a settlement first named Palmerston, and it took the name Darwin in 1911, after the harbor that HMS Beagle captain John Clements Wickham had named for the naturalist Charles Darwin in 1839. The city has been rebuilt four times, after cyclones in 1897 and 1937, Japanese air raids during the Second World War, and Cyclone Tracy in 1974, which destroyed more than seventy percent of its buildings; its 2021 census population was 139,902.

Facts
Population
139,902 1
Area (sq km)
3163.8 1
This is the Greater Darwin statistical area figure carried in the infobox, itself footnoted there as 2011 urban-area data, not the City of Darwin local government area boundary alone.
Founding Year
1869 1
Population Estimate Year
2021 1
Elevation (m)
0 2
Latitude
12.4381 degrees south 1
Longitude
130.8411 degrees east 1
Sources
1. Darwin, Northern Territory (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
    The city had a population of 139,902 at the 2021 census, which is nearly 63% of the territory's population.
  • Infobox: area
    3163.8
  • History section, founding paragraph
    On 5 February 1869, George Goyder, the Surveyor-General of South Australia, established a small settlement of 135 people at Port Darwin between Fort Hill and the escarpment.
  • Infobox Australian place, coordinates field (coord template 12|26|17|S, converted from degrees/minutes/seconds to decimal, southern hemisphere negative)
    12°26′17″S 130°50′28″E
  • Infobox Australian place, coordinates field (coord template 130|50|28|E, converted from degrees/minutes/seconds to decimal)
    12°26′17″S 130°50′28″E
View the Source
2. Darwin (Wikidata)
P2044 (elevation above sea level)
Quote, P2044 (elevation above sea level)
elevation 0 m
View the Source
Wikidata: Darwin
Wikidata Q11568, class allow-list match verified against P17/real-world identity (w-geo-qidcite-0926).View the Source
Darwin (Wikipedia)
In Group: Cities of Australia and New Zealand (World), Wikipedia; part-of country and UN M49 subregionView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.