Tuesday, April 30, 2002 They do things differently in Darwin.

Ross Annabell, in his 1971 book The Uranium Hunters, tells the story of how he was once fired from his job as editor of the Northern Territory News, Darwin's main newspaper, and given six weeks to move out. Normally this might be considered a setback. Not in Darwin. Annabell simply moved into an uninhabited shack in the middle of a banana plantation and went prospecting for uranium.

The story reveals something about the unique belief system that governs life in Darwin. It is often described as a "can do" philosophy; a conviction that no dream is impossible, no hurdle insurmountable.

It explains why Darwin, Australia's smallest capital city, boasts the country's most lavish state-parliament building. It explains why that same parliamentary building became the first in the world to legalise euthanasia. It explains why it is currently constructing one of the world's longest railways, linking Darwin to Sydney and traversing almost 5000km, despite the fact that every economic boffin in the land has dismissed the project as a financial white elephant. And it explains why Darwin will become Australia's seventh Test venue in July 2003, when it hosts a match between Australia and Bangladesh.

This is the miracle that puts all Darwin's other miracles in the shade. Cairns, in far-north Queensland, will host a Test for the first time too, but Cairns is a substantial settlement. Darwin is a dusty, sweaty town of two golf-courses, two cinemas and a couple of decent Mexican restaurants. Its population of 68,000 - 90,000 if you include neighbouring Palmerston - is small enough for everyone to cram into the MCG with enough space left over for a handful of hot-dog stands. Make no mistake, Darwin is the unlikeliest Test venue in the history of the game.

Until now, Darwin has always been predominantly an Aussie Rules football town. It has never hosted a first-class cricket match. It has never produced a Test cricketer it could call its own (Damien Martyn was born in Darwin but left before he could walk). Until 15 years ago it had never even produced a first-class player (there have now been five, although Damion Reeves and Matthew Anderson, the talented Queensland spinner, are the only ones who were actually born there). And until 20 years ago the town did not possess a single turf pitch.

That last point is significant, in that it explains why so few quality cricketers have emerged from Australia's Top End. As someone whose cricketing ambitions were both born and put out of their misery in Darwin, I can vouch for the fact that hard matting wickets are no place to groom reliable forward-defensive techniques. Nor does the tropical heat, which rules out the use of helmets for any length of time, make life easy. Maintaining concentration is no simple matter when running one quick single is the equivalent of swimming 50 laps in a steam bath.

Heat should not be a problem when Bangladesh play Australia in July, because, for a month or so each year, Darwin boasts the best weather in the known universe. The air will be crisp. There should be a gentle breeze in the late afternoon. And there will be absolutely no chance of rain.

Thankfully, too, the match is not being played at the Marrara Cricket Ground, Darwin's scruffy cricketing headquarters, which was somewhat immodestly christened the MCG. Instead it will be held a couple of hundred metres away at Football Park, where the spectator and media facilities are world-class - albeit housed entirely at one end of the ground, giving it a peculiarly lop-sided appearance on TV. On the down side there have occasionally been concerns about the crumbling nature of the playing surface. Also, the ground has never accommodated a cricket pitch before; in fact it has never, so far as I can recall, hosted a cricket game of any description.

But these are trifling issues. What makes Darwin a great Test venue is the place itself. Australia is a fascinating country, but its major sporting events tend to be held in its least fascinating corners - the big cities - which are just like London or Paris, only with warmer weather and more efficient public transport.

Darwin is different. The people wear thongs, drink beer and have barbecues. They don't work too hard. They don't get too serious. They don't make assumptions about others. The front page of the local rag delights in tales about lottery winners, or crocodiles attacking unsuspecting British tourists, or plans to lengthen the nudist beach. It doesn't go in for politics or injustice or any such stuff and nonsense.

So what's Darwin's secret? It might have something to do with the isolation, except that strait-laced Perth is even more isolated but has none of Darwin's laissez-faire charm. Perhaps it has to something to do with Darwin's proximity to Asia. Or perhaps it is the city's familiarity with life-and-death experiences. When a city has been bombed (by the Japanese in 1942) and ripped apart by a cyclone (Tracy, 1974), and rebuilt itself from scratch both times, it learns to take things in its stride.

There are subtle signs that Darwin is changing, for better and worse. Last year the Country Liberal Party - a nasty, racist, unAustralian little government unique to the Northern Territory - was voted out of office for the first time in 26 years. Other changes are less desirable. Earlier this year George Brown, Darwin's larrikin lord mayor who used to pour rum on his cornflakes every morning, passed away and was replaced by a bloke who wears a suit and tie. A couple of weeks ago the Don Hotel, the last of the city's legendary strip joints, closed its doors.

Let's hope Darwin does not change too much. It would be nice to imagine that Test status is the reward for a city coming of age, a cricketing power-base on the up and up. In truth, of course, it is a happy accident, born out of the ACB's need to schedule mid-year matches when the rest of Australia is cold and wet.

It is a fluke, then. But it is a glorious fluke.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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