Darwin Area

Darwin keeps its wilder history on museum display, and nowhere tells it better than the story of Sweetheart. This five-metre saltwater crocodile terrorised local boats before his capture in the 1970s, and he still draws a crowd decades later at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. East Point Reserve offers a gentler encounter, wallabies grazing at dusk among old WWII gun emplacements over the harbour. The city's galleries hold some of the finest Aboriginal art in the country, work brought in from communities across the Top End. Darwin has a way of surprising people who thought they already knew what to expect.