At the end of the Esplanade is a little hidden gem of a rainforest in the city. If you stay up the top of the Esplanade and continue on around to the back of the YWCA hostel, you will come to a set of stairs leading down to the boardwalk through the gully. If you come here during a monsoonal downpour, you can see an awesome waterfall pounding through here.
From the base of the stairs, there is a great little boardwalk snaking through the forest out to the fish feeding area at Aqua Scene and to the Rock indoor rock climbing tank.
Wildlife who call Doctor's Gully home, include Orange-footed scrubfowl, frilled lizards, green tree frogs and black flying foxes flying off to feeding grounds on dusk. Don't forget to check out the spaces between the trees off the path for giant golden orb spiders as well, an amazing sight to see
That is all you really need to know to find the cache. To find out more about the history of the area why it is called Doctor's Gully, read on.
Doctor’s Gully was named in honour of Doctor Peel, ship’s surgeon on the SS Moonta in which Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder led a surveying party from South Australia (the Territory was then the northern part). They dropped anchor in Darwin Harbour on 5 February 1869 and proceeded to lay out streets for a capital. Doctor Peel was in charge of a group of well diggers. They dug a well with plentiful fresh water that became known as 'Peel's Well' which was gazetted on 19 April 1877 and provided water for the first gardens in the settlement and visiting ships. The area then became known by the colloquial name 'Doctor's Gully'.
Apart from finding a good supply of freshwater, the next necessity was a garden to supply fresh vegetables and fruit for the camp. Seeds and plants were quickly planted in the rich floodplain of Doctor's Gully and watered from its abundant well and adjacent creek. Many vegetables flourished including cress, radishes, melons potatoes and also sugarcane and bananas. A vegetable Garden reserve and adjacent water reserve was then established in 1872. For many years the Gully provided ample fresh water for a very successful Market Garden owned and cultivated by the Ah Cheong brothers.
In 1874 a hospital was opened due to the increasing number of outbreaks of malaria within the settlement. The hospital was built on top of the north western cliff enclosing the gully. In 1913 A. Holmes describes the hospital in 1911 ". ..The drains were incomplete and ineffective, often offensive. ..urinal and earth closets situated on verandahs. ..a Chinese gardener used the night soil as fertiliser in the adjacent gully and sold the vegetables back to the hospital."
The gully was handed over to the control of the Town Council for public purposes on 31/1/1921, as was the whole of the Esplanade. This marks the end of the Market Garden era. In the 1930's Doctor's Gully was used by fishermen and small trading vessels, which were able to enter the small creek that led to the well.
The next phase in history came about with the threat of war with Japan. In 1939 the RAAF formed a flying Boat (Catalina) Squadron and based it out of Doctors Gully. There was a construction of a ramp and some buildings in 1941 as well as jetties and slipways for workboats and a refuelling tripod. Aircraft and personnel did not however become permanent residents of Doctor's gully until 1944.
The bombing of Darwin illustrated the vulnerability to aerial attacks of the fuel tanks at Stokes Hill. The government then decided to build underground oil tanks in the escarpment surrounding the city. They also constructed 5 aboveground oil tanks at the edges of town, two of which were located in Doctor's Gully and can still be seen today. After the Japanese surrender, Doctor's Gully was used as a staging point for returning prisoners-of-war from Singapore and the delivery of urgently needed medical supplies to survivors elsewhere. The war was over for Doctor's Gully on 30 November 1945, when the two Catalina squadrons were officially posted south for disbanding.
After the war the government decided to hire a caretaker of Gully in order to prevent vandalism within the area. Carl Atkinson took over the caretaker's position in 1946. In 1962 Atkinson started to attract mullet to the surface on high tides by feeding them bread. He also experimented with meet and found that Carnivores could be attracted as well. He soon had Batfish, Bream, Milkfish and catfish feeding every high tide. In 1964 he convinced the government to declare a suitable area as a Fish Reserve.