Another Adelaide? Traditional Cache
LandlockedSailors: The cache has been removed - apparently by maintenance staff. Reluctantly, I've decided to archive this cache...
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Not many people know the relationship between Darwin and Adelaide is a lot closer than the NT simply having been the Northern Territory of South Australia!
Have you ever wondered why Darwin's CBD streets are mostly straight and cross at right-angles? Does it remind you of somewhere else?
Darwin's harbour was sighted in 1839 by John Lort Stokes of HMS Beagle. The ship's captain, John Clements Wickham, named it after Charles Darwin, the British naturalist, who had sailed with him on an earlier expedition of the Beagle.
On 5th February 1869, George W. Goyder, the Surveyor-General of South Australia, arrived at Port Darwin on the sailing vessel ‘Moonta’ and established a small settlement of 135 men and women which he named Palmerston, after the then British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.
Goyder spent much of the first few weeks looking for a suitable site for the new township and finally decided on Fort Point in Darwin Harbour. The new town’s plan was drawn up aboard the 'Moonta' by Joseph Brooks, the expedition's official photographer and draughtsman, without him even going ashore to view the land chosen.
Goyder had ordered Brooks to simply transpose the grid-plan of Adelaide town to this new location. A much smaller and elongated version was called for as, unlike Adelaide, Palmerston would directly face the sea and was on a peninsula.
Brooks transposed North Terrace, which become Mitchell Street, Franklin Street became McMinn Street, Morphett Street was renamed Bennett Street and Hutt Street became Daly Street. It took Goyder just one morning to go ashore and modify the grid pattern of Adelaide to fit the local topography before surveying commenced.
Within two weeks, the survey of the town had been completed and by 26th April, plans and drafts of the township were sent to Adelaide with photographs, so as to meet the 1st October 1869 deadline when land would go on sale in Adelaide. Forty three thousand acres had been surveyed into 160 and 360 acre sections around the townsite, with 1,019 allotments in the town itself. Field surveys of another 600,000 acres were completed by the end of August.
The streets of Palmerston (now known as Darwin) had been named on the journey to the location long before the site of the township had been selected. Goyder named all the streets after surveyors and members of his party except for Cavenagh Street, which was named after Wentworth Cavenagh-Mainwaring (1822-1895), a South Australian farmer, land agent and MP who was the Commissioner for Lands. His name was given to the principal street and the town square.
Harvey Street, where this cache is, was named after 1st class surveyor William Harvey, who later helped survey the Overland Telegraph line. Harvey Street is worth a visit, if only because not many people even know it exists - it's not really main-stream Darwin! Apart from the history, Harvey Street has little else going for it!
Bring your own writing instrument. No room for swaps.
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