Leaving Darwin

Charles Darwin visited Australia in 1836, as naturalist on HMS Beagle, but he didn't visit the site of the city that now bears his name. Three years later Captain John Clement Wickham, then in command of the Beagle, named the harbour for Charles Darwin. Wickham had been a Lieutenant on the Beagle on the previous voyage and honoured his earlier shipmate. This was long before Darwin published his theory of evolution. The name Darwin was first attached to the settlement when the Northern Territory became a Commonwealth Territory in 1911.