Dutch sailors on the Arnhem made the first recorded sighting of the north coast in the 1620s and Matthew Flinders named Arnhem Land in their honour in 1803. Sporadic attempts to settle the coast included Port Essington (abandoned in 1849) which, while it failed to attract the hoped-for pastoralists and Indonesian traders, fulfilled its role as a garrison protecting the Torres Strait and a deterrent for French and European imperialist aspirations in the area. South Australian pastoralists and speculative investors were the force behind that State's annexation of the Northern Territory in 1863 after which four separate attempts were made to establish a lasting settlement. Three failed attempts between 1863 and 1868 made it easy for the surveyor, George Goyder, to insist on Port Darwin as the site for the northern settlement. He arrived there in February 1869 and the survey and planning of Palmerston was expeditiously undertaken and completed. A remarkable feature of Goyder's vision of the north, especially in view of Darwin's subsequent white history, was his perception that he and his party “were in what to them [the Aboriginal inhabitants] appeared unauthorized and unwarrantable occupation of their country...”
Goyder hoped to make a gesture towards the Aboriginal ownership by using tribal names in the new settlement but by March 1870 all the subdivisions bore the names of Adelaide politicians. As with other attempted northern implantations, the idea was that Darwin would serve as an important port for Australian-Asian links and would attract pastoralists, but the trade did not eventuate, and interest generally was sluggish. Conventional agriculture was impossible in the climate.
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
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