DARWIN'S HERITAGE ASSETS


Fannie Bay Gaol

A prime tourism site with great history & one of Darwin best sandstone building - locked away behind a rusting post -Tracey sheet iron fence. The privileged few who get inside find it as hot as Hades - concrete slabs for demountables & no tourism facilities. There was a tower at the front where a lookout was kept for ships arriving at the head of the harbour. During 15 minutes looking for the footings, more than a dozen disappointed visitors approached the gate which doesn't even have mesh to allow a view of the interior. A complete waste especially given the vast & pivotal NT Police history wherein Inspector Paul Foelsche alone could fill a major gallery.

Victoria Hotel

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This important heritage building is unlisted, unprotected, unoccupied & is a catastrophic fire risk. At the centre of the Smith Street Mall - within sight of the cruise ship terminal - it is unequalled as a potential Tourism Information Centre, Old Darwin Image Gallery & licenced Community Museum. Would it be too much like tilting at windmills to suggest heritage listing the Hotel Victoria before it is too late?
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Florenz Bleeser - NLA image post 1897 cyclone. Old Town Hall at left - Hotel Victoria at right.
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Town Hall Ruins

This building was often photographed and would be simple to reconstruct as has been so successfully done across the road with the Brown's Mart buildings. The project would be advanced if it were possible to find the site where the original stonework was dumped to prevent reconstruction.

Channel Island Leprosarium

Could be a world-class site

Overland Telegraph & Undersea Cable

"No work of greater magnitude or of such vast importance as this knitting of our distant colonies with the rest of our great empire has ever been recorded as having been carried out by one colony without any outside aid whatever." Gladstone addressing parliament 1871

Naval Fuel Storage Facility

An extraordinary opportunity for development in sympathy with the cruise terminal, waterfront & Frances Bay.

The Residency - Government House

Needs serious remedial work - removal of inappropriate artworks - galleries of images of the house and environs. Get the Escape Cliffs gun out of the weather before it rots away or is nicked. The site has never been archaeologically assessed.

Myilly Point

Prime site entirely wasted - even the lime tree's had it.

Doctor's Gully

Chinese Temple, prayer furnace - Catalina base - Goyder's water source - Shou Lao statue - Naval Fuel tanks - currently a carpark & a climbing wall - archaeology rotting away in the bush - bottle dump - railway bogies - boom floats.
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A Territory Story - The First Half a Billion Years 

3D Fly-Thru-Time

The last 500mya - formation of Arnhemland Plateau - life comes on land - >2k erosion - 200mya snowball earth - 65kya glacial maximum humans arrive - 22kya last major ice age - sea drops 130metres - doesn't rain for 1500 years - coast 150kms north of Darwin - second wave of humans, dingos etc - 4kya floodplains form - follow the sea rise until settles down at current level same as 120kya. Graphics of sea fall - vegetation changes - refugia in Cumberland Strait & Investigator sound - Macassans - explorer ships -Portuguese - Dutch - British - Flinders 1803 twice - King 1818 - Barlow at Fort Dundas 1824.

Open 3D+ visual reconstruction - LIDAR Fort Dundas & Garden Point on Melville Island - raise 3D models of buildings on actual foundations - 1827 start Fort Wellington in Raffles Bay on Cobourg Peninsular. Build the fort & relocate buildings from Fort Dundas until 1829 - deconstruct buildings & move to establish Swan River Colony (Perth WA). 1839 start New Victoria Settlement in Port Essington - recreate the entire settlement in 3D - Macassan camp - the works until abandoned in 1848 - 3D deconstruction falls to ruins. Beagle men Fitzmaurice & Key dance for their lives at Escape Cliffs - explore Adelaide River - Beagle under Wickham & Stokes moor in Hope Inlet find Port Darwin - 1846 Finniss arrives in Adam Bay to establish Escape Cliffs 3D reconstruction using photographs of Hamilton & Hake - Horsehide Boat fiasco - 1848 Escape Cliffs abandoned - 1869 Goyder arrives to establish Darwin - 3D camp reconstruction - Undersea cable & OT Line 1871 - Residency morphs into many gables - Darwin 3D growth as a fly-thru-time to present day interspersed with cyclones - gold rush - Chinese activity - WW2 - reconstruction in City Engine software as streets & buildings come & go until present day.