Darwin - Origin of a City:A crocodile pulls a sleeping man into the river by one leg. Another breaks the neck of a swimming policeman. An out of luck miner drowns himself in the towns well. Once called Palmerston, the City of Darwin began in the 1870s. Darwin was a pioneers paradise; sometimes as exciting as it was dull; full of potential but, too often, dangerous. Not everyone survived. The first settlers arrived in January 1870, to find very little other than surveyed blocks