The history of the Northern Territory began over 60,000 years ago when Indigenous Australians settled the region. Makassan traders began trading with the indigenous people of the Northern Territory for trepang from at least the 18th century onwards.
Europeans first sighted the coast of the future Territory in the 17th century. British groups made attempts to settle the coastal regions of the Territory from 1824 onwards, but no settlement proved successful until the establishment of Port Darwin in 1869.
Prehistory
Although sparse, the archaeological record of the Northern Territory provides evidence of settlement around 60,000 years ago at Malakunanja and Nauwalabila, although there is controversy surrounding the thermoluminescent dating of these sites. During this period, sea levels were lower than at present, and Australia and New Guinea along with large tracts of what is now the Timor Sea formed one single landmass.
Abundant and complex rock art testifies to the rich cultural and spiritual lives of the original inhabitants of the Northern Territory, and in many areas of the Northern Territory there is a cultural continuum between the earliest inhabitants and the indigenous population today. Rock art is extremely difficult to date with any reliability, and it can also be difficult to identify a linear sequence of art due to the reworking and reinterpretation of older art by younger generations.
However archaeologists have been able to identify three distinct phases of art: pre-estuarine (dry climate and extinct animals), estuarine (rising sea levels and marine fauna), and freshwater (freshwater fauna, moving into 'historical' subjects such as Makassan traders, and European technology e.g. guns). Rock art also demonstrates cultural and technological changes. For instance, boomerangs give way to broad spearthrowers which give way to long spearthrowers, which give way to guns and boats.
The dingo was introduced from Asia around 3,500 years ago and quickly became integrated into Aboriginal societies, where they played a role in hunting and provided warmth on cold nights.
Makassan and Baijini trade
Sailors from the islands north of Australia were trading with northern coast of Australia before the Dutch arrived in the Indonesian Archipelago around 1600 AD. First the Baijini sea gypsy families came to trade for pearls and for oyster and turtle shell. The Baijini brought their entire families and built houses of stone and ironbark. They planted rice in Warrimiri country and Gumatj country. Later the people who traded out of Makassar (now Ujung Pandang) came in search of trepang, which was prized for its culinary and medicinal values in Chinese markets. The Makassar came only to collect trepang, never setting up permanent camps with crops, apart from dropped tamarind seeds that sprouted. The annual Makassan voyages to the Kimberly and Arnhem Land dated from the 1700s, and ended in 1907 thanks to Australian regulations. However, there are reports of visits perhaps 300 years prior to that, and extended from the Kimberleys in the west, to the east of Gulf of Carpentaria. The Makassans had extensive contact with the indigenous tribes of the Northern Territory, trading cloth, knives, alcohol, and tobacco for the right to fish in Territory waters and use Aboriginal labour.
European exploration and settlement
The first recorded sighting of the Northern Territory coastline was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon aboard the ship in 1606. Abel Tasman and numerous French navigators also charted the coast, naming many prominent features. Captain Phillip Parker King also made surveys of the coast.
Following British settlement in New South Wales in 1788, four unsuccessful attempts were made to settle coastal areas of the Northern Territory prior to the establishment of Darwin.
1824 – 1838
On 30 September 1824, British Captain James Gordon Bremer established Fort Dundas on Melville Island as a part of the Colony of New South Wales. Fort Dundas was the first settlement in Northern Australia. However, poor relations with the Tiwi people, cyclones, and other difficulties of tropical living, led to the Fort being abandoned in 1828. A second settlement was established on the Cobourg Peninsula at Raffles Bay on 18 June 1827. Fort Wellington was founded by Captain James Stirling, but it was also abandoned in 1829.