Burnett House

On Saturday, I had a very desultory morning, and eventually started my perambulations in the right direction. Burnett House is in the National trust precinct near Cullen Bay. Beni Burnett was an early architect in the Northern Territory who planned many houses in both Darwin and Alice Springs. Most of them were single storey houses on stilts, but Burnett House is the only one of his two storey houses that remains. The precinct contains four of his houses.

You will notice that they have a lot of adaptations suitable for the tropics - all round louvres from floor to ceiling to encourage ventilation, wide eaves and they’re elevated to avoid flooding in “the wet” and to provide further ventilation. The interior has sleep outs and dressing areas, and all the doors are like saloon doors, two doors hinged on the outside and finishing a foot below the lintels and a foot above the floors. The house was quite cool inside despite having no air conditioning. These houses were mainly of fibro, so they have a lot of asbestos in them, but it’s all sealed, so it’s not a problem. However, they aren’t up to the cyclone code that was implemented after cyclone Tracey destroyed more than 80% of Darwin.

They’ve planted the gardens extensively and it was nice to wander around. 

In the gardens were a number of placards talking about the aboriginal history of Darwin after European settlement here. The area just across the road from the National Trust precinct was an important part of that history. Initially, the aboriginal inhabitants could freely come and go in the settlement. However, soon they were prohibited from being in the designated area of the town between sundown and sunrise and they were forced to live in a barbed wire area next to the bay (the area near the National Trust). They could carry on with some aspects of their traditional lifestyle as they had sea access, and they were used as servants and labourers, without much, if any, pay. Half caste children were taken away to a school that was near the settlement, but separated from it. The children had little to eat, and were very hungry most of the time.

Then Darwin decided to build a hospital where the aboriginal settlement was and to relocate them to a creek which had no access to the sea and its food. The site of the old hospital is currently being remediated, as the hospital was replaced later and moved to a new site, and the old site has been leveled.

While I was there, I was rung by the tour company and told that the Tiwi Island cruise wouldn’t be happening, so I changed it to a day tour of Litchfield Park.

Afterwards, on my return, I visited St. Mary’s cathedral and photographed the stained glass windows in the entrance.