Darwin
Car Hire Touring Information
Twice
rebuilt, Darwin has a spacious, ordered feel thanks to the
wide streets, newish, low buildings and expansive, manicured
lawns. But it is also a city with a magnificent tropical chaos
as streets give way to mangrove estuaries, brightly coloured
foliage and huge.
Darwin is Australia’s most diverse city culturally and
ethnically. The mix includes: southern transients on northern
assignments; tourists from as far away as Europe on extended
stays; Aboriginal communities to whom the site of Darwin once
belonged; the stayers, the settlers who have lived through
successive disasters (and who have kept coming back); and
the large immigrant communities, most hailing from nearby
South-East Asia and China.
The
climate of the Top End is legendary. The temperatures sit
for most of the year in the low thirties. Between May and
October the air is dry and still. The period from October
to mid-December is known locally as ‘the build-up, humidity
increases dramatically and the sky is heavy with storm clouds.
This is a dreaded time of random madness, as residents wait
for the monsoonal downpours to start. When the thunderclouds
finally break, the surrounding landscape turns a lush tropical
green and the local wildlife population expands.
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