Darwin has had a rough history. During World War II, the small city served as a base for Allied attacks and was relentlessly bombed by the Japanese. After the war, the city settled into the role of the nation’s final frontier, but the calm was shattered on Christmas Eve, 1974, when Cyclone Tracy devastated the city and killed 65 people.
Today, things are looking a lot brighter for Darwin, now a multicultural city of 103,000 that serves as a stepping stone to Asia. Early in 2004, a new era of business and tourism began for the city with the opening of the AustralAsia Railway, the first direct link between the north and south coasts.
Also fueling the economic boom is the Darwin LNG project. It’s creating more than 1,000 construction jobs, and 100 permanent workers will be needed to operate the new gasification facility. The Australian economy also will benefit, reaping an estimated A$1.5 billion over the next two decades in revenue from the plant and the development of the Bayu-Undan gas field.
How important is the new energy project? Clare Martin, chief minister of the Northern Territory, has said, “It marks a turning point in the territory’s economic history.”
