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Darwin - forgotten outpost, or Frontline Australia, as the license plate slogans put it?
Australia's most remote and most unusual city, Darwin has always been first landfall for visitors from the north, hostile or otherwise: Macassan gatherers of trepang, a sea slug esteemed by Chinese gourmets; the Imperial Japanese Air Force; Vietnamese boat people; even perhaps the junks of the legendary 15th Century Chinese admiral Cheng Ho.
The city has been devastated twice by natural forces - tropical cyclones - and once by enemy action as Japanese bombers dumped 64 loads of high explosive. Little wonder that the Territory today prizes a strong sense of its colourful, at times embattled, past. Squat concrete gun emplacements from World War II days still stand behind many suburban beaches.
Today the only hostile invaders expected are the venomous box jellyfish and the saltwater crocodile. Image gallery
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