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School’s back! And it's 140 years since Darwin's very first school opened in 1877. The first teacher was John Holt, who taught the school's 34 students. The school was housed in an old government store and its facilities were poor, to say the least. Students had a total of just 27 feet of bench space to work at. The building was thought to be “completely unsatisfactory” and the teacher ‘became insane and died in 1879’. The building was destroyed in the 1897 cyclone along with most of Darwin. Here's to a much more enjoyable school year in 2017!

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Forgotten Territory was a weekly photo column of historic images in the Northern Territory News which I curated from 2016 until 2019 supported by the collections of the Northern Territory Library and other cultural institutions around Australia, as well as local history Facebook groups. 

Click on the images to read the story behind the image.

Warning: May contain images of people who have died.

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