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If Darwin is not protected, Australia is not protected People who live in the south often think of Darwin as isolated, but we are central to our nation’s interests and closest to the fortunes of half a billion people in Asia. It’s those Australians residing in far-flung Melbourne and Sydney who live farthest from where our nation’s destiny resides. Darwin is part of Asia and the Royal Australian Air Force understands this. It routinely holds, with a growing number of partners and allies from across the region and beyond, joint exercises using the Northern Territory’s RAAF Base Darwin and RAAF Base Tindal. The RAAF, celebrating 100 years of service to the nation, is good at making friends and trading wisdom. Here in the north, we’re good at making sure all who come feel welcome as a place to live, work and, as is so important for the RAAF, to continuously train and prepare. The Northern Territory’s Bradshaw and Delamere ranges are considered the finest pilot training grounds in the Indo-Pacific, due to the low electro24
magnetic interference and lack of commercial overflight. The RAAF understands that if Darwin is not protected, Australia is not protected. That is our history and that is our reality. The first plane to touch down in Darwin, was a Vickers-Vimy bi-plane with Captain Ross Smith, Lieutenant Keith Smith, Sergeants Wally Shiers and Jim Bennett aboard. It was 1919 and the team had just won the Great Air Race — and a handy 10,000 pounds. Darwin was not a capital city back then and the RAAF was two years away from being christened in 1921. But Ross Smith, who had flown with the RAAF predecessor, the Australian Flying Corps, where he was an awarded air ace, had done something remarkable in being the first to fly from Great Britain to Australia. Ross Smith and his team had not only opened up the world, they put our northern outpost on the map as the logical entry point to Australia after island-hopping across the then Dutch East Indies.
It was also the logical place to strike Australia when Japan launched two massive assaults on Darwin on February 19, 1942. On the morning of the raids, more than 1000 service men and women were busy at their normal duties at RAAF Base Darwin and had little time to respond. Ten aircraft were parked in the open, and they were all destroyed — along with a squadron of brave American Curtiss P-40 pilots who went up to try and counter the invasion and were all but wiped out. The alliances formed at that time remain inviolate. Darwin hosted a large number of RAAF and US Army Air Force units during World War II and served as a first refuge for retreating USAAF units from the Philippines in 1941 — not to mention American ships which sought shelter in Darwin Harbour and paid a terrible toll. Originally known as Carson’s Airfield, RAAF Base Tindal was constructed in 1942 by the US Army’s 43rd Engineer General Service
