Charles Darwin University

With no offices or permanent staff, adult education classes in typing, shorthand and French were first conducted in school premises and taught by teachers working outside of normal hours.Darwin’s Adult Education Centre’s first full-time Principal Harold Garner brought tremendous energy to the role.On enrolment day the Centre resembled an ant’s nest, thriving with activity.It was the first institution to offer post-secondary studies in the Northern Territory.In March 1974 Darwin’s Adult Education Centre graduated to become the Darwin Community College.Nine months later, on Christmas eve, Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, the college directly in its path in the maximum destruction zone.The Darwin Community College was later known as the Darwin Institute of Technology.Talk of a university in the Territory had been brewing as far back as 1950s.The objectives – to stop the brain drain south, conduct research into the Territory’s unique desert and tropical environments, and aid in development towards statehood.This would take another name change for the Darwin Community College.The Federal Government’s introduction of the Unified National System finally come to fruition in 1989, with the establishment of the Northern Territory University.There was one last merger, this time with the Alice Spring’s Centralian College in 2003, and one last name change to ‘Charles Darwin University’(CDU).