From Amy Johnson to ‘Smithy’: Introducing Darwin’s rich aviation heritage

When Territorians are paying big bucks for air tickets, remember the first ever passenger was paid £10,000. Read on.

Rather than paying to access Darwin Airport, the first arrivals to the Northern Territory capital were actually paid to come here.

That was November 1919, when brothers Ross and Keith Smith in their Vickers Vimy bomber won the then £10,000 purse (around $1.3m AUD today) offered by the Australian Government to the winner of the London to Australia Air Race.

The actual strip - as opposed to an actual airport - was located on what is now Ross Smith Avenue, with the road’s gun barrel line tracing the original early-20th century surveys.

So began a rich and diverse aviation heritage that Airport Development Group, which currently owns Darwin, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs airports, could only hope to replicate.

Amy Johnson made it to Darwin.

Other storeyed arrivals during the pioneering days of aviation included Amy Johnson, Charles Kingsford Smith, and Charles Ulm.

In the 1950s, the Cold War suddenly erupted at tropical Darwin airport when NT police intervened to stop the forcible removal back to Moscow of Evdokia Petrov, wife of Russian spy and defector Vladimir Petrov.

By far the most memorable celebrity arrivals were the Beatles, who touched down on an unscheduled arrival in June 1964 en route to Sydney.

Despite their aircraft landing to refuel at 2am, the Fab Four were welcomed by 600 screaming fans, which set the standard for what followed during the rest of the Australian tour.

Other notable moments in the life of the Top End airport include the Cyclone Tracy airlift, which saw two Boeing 747 flights set an aircraft world carrying record of 673 and 674 passengers on board respectively, as well as the Covid-19 repatriation flights.

But it's the aeroplanes, as well as people, that make a successful airport and there is a rich history of airlines landing in the tropical capital.

Longtime observers of Darwin’s aviation sector say the Inpex construction phase, which also turbocharged the NT economy, saw an unprecedented flurry of activity – that was never replicated before or since.

Evdokia Petrov flanked by her Soviet escort.

“Darwin’s peak for international services was during the Inpex time, where you had some workers coming in, and also a cashed up population who were wanting to have downtime elsewhere between the construction swings,” one Darwin-based watcher observed.

“That was almost a unique set of circumstances which may or not be replicated if we don’t have the major projects get off the ground here in the Territory.”

Regular services flying into Darwin at that time included Qantas, Virgin, Tiger, AirAsia as well as Philippines, Singapore and Malaysian airlines.

There were also, briefly, flights to India and Japan out of Darwin as well as forays in and out by airlines as varied as Timor Air, Palau Micronesia Air (for a fortnight) and China’s Donghai Airlines.

A decade later, only two of those are still flying into Darwin, with many of those sent packing during the economic slump that followed the Inpex boom.

Other notable arrivals over the years include Royal Brunei Airlines, which ran a service for 20-years until the early 2000s, Silk Air and Indonesia’s Mapatti Airlines.

Today, the major aviation operators in the Northern Territory are Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin, Airnorth, Singapore Airlines, Nexus and AirAsia, which is set to return next month after a seven year hiatus.