Darwin

Darwin is the capital city of the Top End of Australia or the Northern Territory (NT). It's a port city situated on the Timor Sea & is in close proximity to Indonesia & East Timor. It's the largest city in the vast NT but even so is comprised of a population slightly under 100,000. The rest of the NT, which occupies over 520,000 square miles, is sparsely populated with a total population of slightly more than 200,000 for the entire territory. With half of the total population living in Darwin & the other half dispersed among the other major settlements, Kathrine, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, & Nhulundbuy, & multiple smaller remote communities.

Over 30% of the inhabitants of the NT are Aboriginal Australians with the remainder being primarily of European descent & a minority of Asian descent. There's a surprisingly large Greek community in Darwin of about 10,000--that's 10% of the population of Darwin! As a reflection of this, there's a large Greek Orthodox church in downtown Darwin, which I plan to visit.

The climate in Darwin is tropical with distinct wet & dry seasons but otherwise very little variation in the temperature year round with lows in the 60s & highs in the 80s. I'm catching the tail end of the wet season which runs from December through March. It reminds me of Durham in June & July (though it never gets quite as hot as Durham can get) with mostly sunny, humid days marked by sudden, brief rainfall.