Darwin and Beyond Coast Australia

This is Coast's biggest challenge ever.

We're traversing the oldest continental landmass on Earth...

Australia.

It's the sixth largest country in the world by size,

offering us an endless, unimaginable coastline

to discover incredible stories of history and intrigue.

We're taking you to magnificent cities, remote areas

never before seen from the air and meeting the people who have

chosen to hug their coastline like no other population on the planet...

This is a landscape that dwarfs humankind.

..and it has a history of equal magnitude,

dating back 50,000 years.

Yet its modern history is so young,

a new people discovering a land of immense potential

and unlimited beauty, on a scale that's hard to describe.

If you want to feel young and, frankly, reassuringly insignificant,

you should come here.

So for us, it's an epic journey full of wonder, surprise and fascination.

I've made it to the Top End, to the legendary Northern Territory.

It's home to a capital city that's been destroyed and rebuilt twice.

This is Australia's tropical frontier, its front door to Asia.

In fact, capital city Darwin is closer to Jakarta

than it is to Sydney.

History's merchants have plied their wares here since antiquity.

Macassans from the Spice Islands, the Chinese,

traded with the Saltwater people and then the colonists.

But the Northern Territory has no gentle tale of settlement.

With crocodiles for company in the warm waters

and crushing humidity above,

this is a coast that rewards the fearless and punishes the reckless.

Joining me on this extraordinary journey through the Top End,

Palaeontologist Professor Tim Flannery unearths

an uncomfortable truth.

It was this country that defeated the greatest empire

the world's ever seen, the British Empire.

There will be blood with Marine Biologist Dr Emma Johnston.

Miriam Corowa confirms that not all Hollywood dreams come true.

While it began with a million dollars,

it was really nowhere near enough.

And I relive the day the front line moved to Australia.

The attack has gone down in history as Australia's Pearl Harbour.

This is Coast Australia.

Our journey centres around Darwin,

heads to the coastal flood plains of the Adelaide River

and up to the pristine Cobourg Peninsula in the east.

In 1606, the Dutch had begun mapping the northern coastline

of what they called New Holland.

But they were well east of here,

in the Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York.

It's generally accepted that the first Europeans to sail

into these waters were the crew of the HMS Beagle, under the command

of John Lort Stokes, who wrote admiringly

of the impressive location of the many-armed harbour.

In 1839, HMS Beagle came in here and the captain was so struck

by the natural beauty of the splendid harbour,

he decided to name it after a gifted young naturalist he'd sailed

with on previous trips - a chap by the name of Charles Darwin.

Ironically, Charles Darwin never actually visited

this part of Australia

and he would have had good grounds for being grateful for the fact,

because it was hellish to settle.

The British tried and failed on three separate occasions.

Eventually, 30 years after the Beagle's visit,

a fourth attempt... and this time, success!

The state of South Australia, which governed this region,

sent a surveyor up here to establish a settlement,

a dynamo of a man called George Goyder.

Goyder was nicknamed Little Energy, and he was so tenacious,

he quickly established this camp and ensured it was sustainable.

As Goyder built his camp right here on the coast,

two extraordinary engineering projects were under way.

First, an Overland Telegraph Line that spanned the continent

from Adelaide to Darwin,

3,200km across some of the harshest country on Earth...

..linking up to this the long distance undersea cable.

Now, it might not look like much today,

but when this cable arrived here 150 years ago, it was a huge event.

This revolutionised Australia.

It provided a direct link back to Britain

and near-instantaneous communication with the rest of the world.

Laid on the seabed, the submarine cable snaked 2,000km

to connect Darwin and Java

and then onto Jakarta, Singapore, Europe and London...

a true feat of engineering excellence.

Goyder's camp and the founding of Darwin

was a triumph of endurance rather than inspiration.

This tropical strength coastline defeated the British time and again

and particularly harshly in the Cobourg Peninsula,

a historical moment that has long intrigued

Palaeontologist Professor Tim Flannery.

I've just arrived on the Cobourg Peninsula.

It's about 300km north-east of Darwin and about as far north

as you can get in Australia's Top End.

And for as long I can remember, I've really wanted to come here

because about 25km to the east of here,

a chapter in Australia's history unfolded that I think is

one of the most extraordinary in the whole history of the continent.

-Oh, Alan, is it?

-Good morning. How are you, Tim?

-Good morning.

-Glad to see you.

-Pleased to meet you, mate.

'It's certainly remote.

'In the early 19th century, this was the frontier for European

'settlement in Australia's north.'

A tantalising prospect for any explorer.

Even today access is limited,

to boat or plane in the wet season,

'or one long dirt road in the dry,

'ensuring that something of the severely mythic

'still attaches to this tropical place.'

'This beach looks as untouched by the human hand

'as any place I've ever seen.'

But there are hints here of a different history.

The people who cut this block of iron stone 180 years ago

thought they were laying the foundations

for one of the world's great trade cities.

They were fantastic optimists

and they named the place after their young queen, Victoria.

I'm keen to find out why the Victoria Settlement,

which became known as Port Essington, was conceived

with such enthusiasm and confidence,

yet within a few short years

had been abandoned as a bitter failure.

This was the site of British attempts to, in effect,

ring-fence the nascent colony.

Paranoid about a French foothold,

Victoria was first about defence and then trade,

a desire to break into the lucrative trepang

or sea cucumber market with Asia.

Wow. This is my first sight of the Victoria Settlement.

And already I can see why people had trouble surviving here.

Just look at that chimney on the married men's quarters

here on the outskirts of the settlement.

That must have taken a huge amount of effort to build,

it's absolutely solid. You look at it here...

there's probably a few weeks' work gone into building this,

cutting the stone..

shaping the fireplace and all of the energy you put into doing this,

in a climate where all you need is an open fire 364 days a year,

is energy you don't have for other things.

History Professor Alan Powell has written extensively

about the maritime record of northern Australia.

-Ah, Alan Powell, is it?

-Yes, indeed.

-Hello, Tim Flannery.

-How are you?

So this could have been Nouvelle-France?

Possibly, although in fact the English worried too much.

The French had already decided by the time this place was set up

that they were going to concentrate on New Zealand

-and New Caledonia, but the British didn't know that.

-No.

That's the only painting I've seen of aborigines here.

But some of the major ones, Jack White there,

who was still around in the 1880s to greet the buffalo hunters.

So, what's the building back here?

That's the hospital behind you here.

So they were standing right here when they were painted.

Isn't that extraordinary? Look at that.

Well, you know, Alan, I'm really keen

to have a look at this hospital,

because it just to an untrained eye, it looks to me to be rather outsized

for the size of the settlement.

There seems to be a gigantic hospital

on what's rather a trivial-sized settlement, really.

Well, oddly enough, they thought...

For the first four years or so, there was almost no sickness.

They didn't realise, when they started getting supply ships in

from Timor, that they were bringing in malaria with them.

And at one stage, everybody except one man

on the settlement had malaria.

It's difficult to comprehend the conditions

that the settlers endured here.

Dressed in their thick woollen uniforms, in their stone buildings,

on a day that was so hot that you'd be bathed in sweat

just standing still.

And when you add to that the malaria, the other illnesses,

the snakes and a hospital full of colleagues

in various stages of death and dying...

you know, it's a wonder they endured as long as they did.

'You know, almost everyone who arrived here came by sea.

'But there was one man who walked into Port Essington.'

His name was Ludwig Leichhardt

and he was one of Australia's greatest explorers.

It took him 15 months to cover the 4,800km

between South East Queensland and here.

And on the way, he discovered some of the best pastoral

property in the whole of Australia.

One of the things that makes Leichhardt so interesting

is that he wasn't just a geographical explorer,

he was a culinary explorer, as well.

One of the greatest scourges for people travelling through

the country or even at sea was scurvy.

Explorers in Australia came home with their skin so black

their wives didn't recognise them,

with their gums so swollen they couldn't swallow,

all as a result of the disease.

But Leichhardt was the exception.

He never got scurvy, neither did his crew

and part of the reason lies in this humble-looking little bush here,

a thing called a Billy Goat Plum.

Leichhardt tried the fruit as he went along and he discovered

in those small berries up there,

one of the richest sources of vitamin C on Earth

and that's what you need if you want to keep scurvy at bay.

The same couldn't be said for those doomed pioneers of Port Essington,

'who were sick, despondent and isolated.

'And this was the last stop for many of them...

'the cemetery.'

So, Alan, what happened here at the end?

Well, it just outlived its usefulness.

It'd been here for 11 years,

it attracted no settlers, it attracted no traders,

it was too far away to act as a port of refuge for shipwrecked sailors

from the Torres Strait and by now, it was quite apparent the French

had no more interest in Australia, so they simply pulled out.

Well, one day in 1849, the last survivors of the Port Essington

settlement walked down that jetty,

you can see the remains of it behind me,

and bade farewell to this place, presumably without regret.

Their story was really one of heroic endurance, but for me,

it's a deeply disturbing story because they didn't seem to learn

through the experience of living in this land.

They weren't like Leichhardt, they weren't like the aborigines.

And really, you know, at the end of the day,

it was this country that defeated the greatest empire

the world's ever seen, the British Empire.

And to this day, it's as it was,

pristine functioning ecosystems,

tremendous biodiversity that have endured beyond everything

that really the world has been able to throw at it to this point.

But the harsh country wasn't done claiming its pioneering victims.

Just three years later, Leichhardt himself disappeared

while on another continent-crossing journey.

His warmth towards Port Essington

contrasts with another famous visitor's bile.

Biologist Thomas Huxley visited by ship in the settlement's last days,

and recorded his disgust in vivid terms.

"The most useless, miserable, ill-managed hole

"in Her majesty's dominions, fit for neither man nor beast.

"Day and night, there is the same fearful damp

"and depressing heat, producing unconquerable languor...

"Port Essington is worse than a ship.

"It is no small comfort to know this is possible."

A damning description, but perhaps fortunate for the Cobourg Peninsula

and its unspoiled environment,

when European settlement took hold faraway in Port Darwin.

This part of the coastline is spoilt for choice

when it comes to special places.

Many of them are sacred to the traditional owners,

people who've inhabited them sustainably for centuries.

Long before any European ever laid eyes on this part of Australia,

the Aboriginal people living here had a working relationship

with the maritime people of the Macassan kingdom of Gowa,

part of modern day Indonesia.

They were in the habit of coming down here to fish for sea cucumbers

that they then traded with the Chinese.

All of that created an Asian legacy that lasts to this day

and it's why this region is known as a melting pot,

not because of the crushing heat but because of the people.

Contact between Australia's northern indigenous peoples

and the Macassans, who hailed from Sulawesi

and other Spice Islands, dates as far back as the 1600s.

Later, in the 1700s, they exchanged commodities like tobacco, cloth

and rice for the right to harvest the highly prized sea cucumber.

The Macassans lived semi-permanently along this tropical coastline

and mixed in with the locals until trade dwindled out after tax and

licences were imposed by the British towards the end of the 19th century.

Today, 50 different cultures live and work together in Darwin.

Asian, European and Aboriginal cultures,

blended together in this cosmopolitan city.

I've come to secluded Casuarina Beach, just north of the city,

to catch up with Roque Lee, a fisherman and artist

who traces his lineage back through that rich multicultural mix.

We paint what we call X-Ray style of art.. so, it shows internals.

Oh, I see.

If it wasn't for my Aboriginality, I wouldn't be doing this.

How do you see yourself in terms of...Aborigine, Asian...?

I have both different ancestries in me,

um, but the strongest of my feelings is towards my Aboriginal side.

If you lived in Darwin for any period,

you'd soon find that you'll have a cross...

multicultural crosses that you, you know, didn't think were possible.

The history of this coastline is one of challenge.

It thwarted settlement for a further 50 years after the first

fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788.

So, it's not surprising that its recent history is also

marked by adversity,

an attack of such force and ferocity in the opening months of 1942,

that it laid waste to a small frontier town as it was then,

called Darwin.

Among the library of stories about World War II,

there are few to choose from that feature combat on Australian soil.

In fact, Australians fought the enemy elsewhere

with great distinction,

in the fetid jungles of New Guinea

to the burning deserts of North Africa.

But there was one day, 70 years ago, that war's menacing hand

reached across the sea and gripped this country.

I've come here, to Darwin,

to investigate the incredible violence of that day

and an extraordinary story of atonement in its aftermath.

At the height of their expansion into the Pacific,

the Japanese had good tactical reasons for targeting Australia

and they did it with such force in this anchorage in February 1942,

the attack has gone done in history

as Australia's Pearl Harbour.

Darwin had become an important Allied base for the defence

of the Dutch East Indies and so it became a target

for the rapid, all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army.

They rained bombs upon Darwin and the small town of 10,000 residents

simply wasn't prepared for such horror and destruction.

On a warm day in town,

I'm meeting author and military historian Tom Lewis,

who paints a dire picture

of Australia's readiness for war at that time.

The anti-aircraft defences hadn't really been tested in anger before.

The big guns that were based here hadn't been fired.

They weren't allowed to be fired,

because it might upset the townspeople.

The trees here weren't allowed to be cut down

because it might spoil the view.

So there were a lot of bored troops sitting around wondering

whether they were going to be able to defend the place at all.

Some of the ammunition was World War I

and some of it was marked "Not For Use In The Tropics",

-and it is pretty hot here.

-Yeah.

So, they weren't that prepared but there were quite a number of them

and they were ready to fight... DISTANT SIRENS

..and when they did have to fight, they did a good job.

DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

The Japanese were expected,

but we weren't sure on which day they'd arrive.

And we thought they'd arrive from this direction,

-when in fact, they arrived from...

-Which is?

-That's roughly north.

Right - oh, right.

...they arrived from pretty well that direction,

so, taking the enemy by surprise.

And the initial attack was from high level bombers at about 10,000ft,

followed by the dive bombers after the high level bombers had done

their work and left, and escorted all the time by the fighters.

And 188 aircraft, it was pandemonium.

The raid began on 19th of January, 1942,

just before 10am and lasted till about 10:20...

only 25 minutes to destroy Darwin Harbour and then the town.

36 Zero fighters, 71 dive-bombers and 81 level bombers

comprised the Japanese attack force that assaulted Darwin.

The Post Office was utterly destroyed.

The civilian people were killed inside

and a number of big buildings were struck,

but the main action was in the harbour. So, it was here.

And right throughout this area here were fighting ships

trying to put up a defence against the aircraft.

Within hours, 235 were dead, including civilians.

And 22 ships, 38,000 tonnes worth, were sinking or sunk.

It was a catastrophic event,

-it was as bad, really, as it could have been.

-Oh, yes.

It's the biggest attack on the Australian landmass we've ever had.

What were the Japanese hoping to achieve?

What's their the strategy here?

Two main reasons for attacking Darwin.

The first is that they'd now taken the Southeast Asian Japanese empire

that they'd hoped for,

stretching down as far south as the islands of Indonesia.

They'd overrun Singapore,

they'd swept the Americans out of the Philippines, they'd done a great job.

Now's the time for consolidation - so what you don't want is this large

deepwater harbour, with airfields and oil tanks and everything else,

to be used as a base to attack what you've now got in Southeast Asia.

So that's reason one.

But reason two is they were going to take New Guinea.

Part of the plan was to take New Guinea because if you took

New Guinea, you can control the eastern seaboard to Australia

and you can stop the perfidious Americans arriving

to attack the Japanese.

And this is...?

This is one of the guns from USS Peary, a fighting destroyer

of the United States Navy and she went down on 19th February.

Fought very bravely,

but the end was over for her within 10 minutes, 12 minutes.

Was USS Peary the single biggest loss of life?

The Peary lost 88 people and the gun points to where she went down,

stern down in the water, guns still going, surrounded by smoke...

very sad.

A day of great tragedy and loss,

the scars from which dwelt within the hearts, minds and landscapes

of the besieged for many years.

But Darwin's dark memories defied history and within a few

short years, took a remarkable turn towards reconciliation.

If you'd been here in Darwin's harbour at the end of World War II,

you'd have looked out at a disturbing, extraordinary sight...

the sea in every direction littered with sunken ships.

Seven decades on, Darwin Harbour has a murky

but haunting tale to tell of that day and others that followed.

'With the help of marine archaeologist David Steinberg,

'I'm going to find out what lies beneath.'

-Ta.

-Good to see you, mate.

-How are you?

David, I have to say on the surface, the water looks like green soup.

What is it like for diving?

Underwater, it looks like green soup, as well.

This is foul ground, a marine term,

a harbour of half submerged, war-torn hulls.

But it wasn't for aesthetic reasons,

or even out of respect for the dead,

that the harbourmaster wanted it cleared.

It was a shipping hazard.

So after the war, what did the people of Darwin

do about their harbour full of wrecks?

Well, they actually turned to the Japanese.

Ironically, there was a Japanese salvage company, privately owned,

that operated in Southeast Asia successfully,

salvaging Japanese wrecks from the war.

It's just about the most controversial move I can think of,

to actually bring in Japanese people

to clear up from the Japanese bombing raid.

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

And they certainly appreciated the irony at the time.

How did the locals feel?

I mean, they can't all have been in favour of it,

however practical a step it was...?

I think that's a fair enough statement to say,

that there were people that upset about it,

but the general consensus was it was OK.

These people were coming to do a job, a job that we couldn't do.

And there was a sense, also, by the Japanese company

of how sensitive this was

and they saw this as self-imposed war reparation.

They saw it as their job to clear up the scars of the landscape.

Talk about historical irony...

and grace.

Ryogo Fujita took on the salvage of Darwin Harbour

as a commercial proposition when no suitably qualified

Australian company could be found.

But he endeared himself

when he spoke of building friendship between his country and Australia.

Imagine the courage and moral fibre it would have taken

to be living in the heart of territory

so recently regarded as enemy.

A good guy the locals least expected, in word and in deed.

The abundance of life here is not confined to the coastline.

As we travel along the mangrove fringe of the Northern Territory,

the sea arcs and reaches in to the unique coastal flood plains

of the Adelaide River,

where Miriam Corowa investigates the intriguing history

behind one of the most unusual agricultural endeavours

undertaken in this country.

It was an idea that bizarrely brought Hollywood to Humpty Doo,

about an hour south-east of Darwin

and a million miles from anywhere else.

'Heather Boulden, from the Friends of Fogg Dam,

'explains the vision splendid to me.'

What's the significance of this area?

Well, this place is Fogg Dam,

which was built for the Humpty Doo Rice Project of the 1950s.

After the bombing of Darwin in the Second World War,

the Australia government was keen to develop the north,

increase the population.

One of the federal ministers at the time, Harold Holt,

went to the US and sold the idea of growing rice here,

in the Northern Territory on the Adelaide River flood plains.

The late 1940s and into the '50s was boom-time in America,

but also the advent of the Cold War.

The dream was to grow rice in Humpty Doo to support

a recovering post-war world,

in the fervent belief that hunger bred communism.

The Northern Territory could become the region's food bowl.

New skills, new markets, big money

and big ideas here would feed the starving millions of Asia

and become a bulwark against the spread of communism.

Through Holt's Washington connections,

the idea was taken up by a syndicate of wealthy businessmen,

along with TV personality and philanthropist, Art Linkletter.

They invested heavily and Territory Rice Limited was born in 1955.

-RECORDING:

-Here in northern Australia, Humpty Doo Farm

along the flats of the Adelaide river, 30 miles from the coast,

is producing a robust long grain rice ready for world markets.

The project, though, was absolutely massive, it ended up being a joint

Australian-American project and the agreement was that the business

could have 200,000 hectares of land, which would be from more or less

the Adelaide River to Kakadu, for rice farming,

which is pretty amazing.

And they went into it in a big way with machinery

and very little planning and expected to sort of...

it to work out quickly, too.

As we've already seen and heard, this coastline is not to be

underestimated, especially by men with more money than sense.

For such a grand scheme, at a million dollars,

it was woefully underfunded.

The distance from Darwin, along 70km of rough track,

was a major impediment to its success.

The wet season delivered rain in monsoonal floods,

bogging heavy harvesting machinery for months,

while the rest of the year was bone dry.

The local birdlife was blamed wrongly of eating too much grain.

-And if those weren't challenges enough...

-They were also using

some of the water from the Adelaide River which, being close to the sea,

would sometimes be brackish and they were growing salt-sensitive rice.

So I mean, as I say, so many issues, really.

A champagne business model drowned by a salty Mother Nature.

By 1960, after only five years, the project went down as

one of the biggest agricultural failures in Australian history.

And a final irony -

little did they know that wild rice had been growing in these

coastal plains and harvested by Aborigines, for thousands of years.

Perhaps, someone should have asked them

before embarking on what was a grand folly.

History repeating itself.

Much like the fate of this coast's early settlers,

Australia's unforgiving northern frontier defeated the unprepared.

To survive and prosper here requires tenacity, local knowledge

and a wide variety of skills.

And a particularly fine example of all that

is a legend who's harvested more from these muddy mangroves

than the average man.

All the history books will tell you that Australia was first

sighted by Europeans in the year 1606, but a curious piece of

flotsam has turned up in these parts that could rewrite the history.

I'm told the mysterious artefact was turned up by a local fisherman,

Bill Boustead, who just happens to be a former world champion

in a very niche sport...

How are you doing, Bill?

'World Barefoot Crab Tying, in fact!'

Good to meet you.

And this is Bill's bountiful backyard,

about 30km northeast of Darwin,

mangroves and mudflats that are the perfect habitat

for the highly prized crustacean, Mud Crab.

There's the first spot.

-Feels good.

-You take them, yeah?

-There's three keepers.

Well, we'll move on, see if there's some more in the next pot.

-Some place you've got here, Bill.

-It is, eh.

But you've seen nothing yet.

Well, here's another pot. We'll try this one.

-This one feels kind of light. Oh, look.

-Oh.

-Gigantor, look at them!

-I win.

-Oh, look at that.

-I win!

-You win. You win.

-Look at them monsters!

-Champion!

Right. We're going to tie them up, yeah?

Oh, look. It's the size of them.

How much damage could the claws do to a person's fingers and toes?

-Oh, see those beady eyes?

-Yeah.

When they grab you, they just give a bit of a squeeze

and they look you fair in the eye and say, "Is that hurting?"

And then they squeeze a bit harder.

And why are you putting your barefoot on it?

That seems like the wrong thing to do.

You need the toe to be able to hold it down, you can't really get

a feel if you've got boots on.

Yeah, it sounds sort of like it's more risky and that, but it's not.

-So you go round there like that. Tip him up and over.

-So neat.

-And that makes it that he's safe to handle.

-You make it look so simple.

Yeah. It is rather simple.

-I'll grab another one.

-Right. Do another one.

So in the competition, what were you required to do?

We stood on a stage and they'd throw three crabs, wild and woolly,

to each contestant and you had to then grab them one at a time,

tie them against the clock and the other contestant.

-Yeah.

-And how fast were you able to tie it?

Well, my record was three crabs in 32 seconds.

What a strange and unexpected skill to have,

barefoot crab tying.

And before you ask, no, I don't want a go.

Now that I've escaped that challenge, Bill is going cook up

some of his morning's catch for me

to try and see what all the fuss is about.

-Instant death.

-Instant death.

Right, Bill, while we wait for those crabs, tell me about this.

Where did this come from?

Well, I was waiting for fishing that particular day

so I had time on my hands.

So I walked through the mangroves along an old, ancient sort of

beach line and this was just exposed at top of the high water mark.

-Wow. Have you had experts take a look at it?

-I have.

I took it to the Wollongong University.

It came back, probable southern European of 500-600 years old.

And by southern European, what countries do you mean?

They thought that it could be Portugal

and that Portugal at that time...

There were suspicions that they'd been in the area here

around those sorts of dates.

So you don't think that this vessel washed ashore

from further north in Asia?

I would like to think that...

that it was thrown off or for whatever reason,

discarded from a Portuguese vessel within close range.

-But that's a bit of, you know... that's my dreaming..

-I'm with you.

I'm with you. That's a good one. I like that...

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Well, that's what I think, too.

And if history is anything to go by,

Bill's dreaming is not too far-fetched.

After all, the Portuguese,

at the height of their imperial reach in the 1500s,

were a colonial presence in the Spice Islands of south-east Asia.

Time for lunch and my first taste of fresh mud crab.

Is that going to...?

The next best thing is a bit of fresh bread and a real cold beer.

-You got that?

-I have.

Crab is my favourite food in the world and...

..it's quite possible that's the nicest crab I've ever had

anywhere in the world.

Well, it's been a truly memorable experience.

I've been treated to a coastal jewel of the Top End

and I've seen a relic, which, if the experts can agree on its age,

could rewrite the history of European contact with Australia.

Australia's vast remote northern coastline harbours many a surprise.

It's a tropical wonderland, with a huge and exotic marine population.

But there are hidden challenges to this beautiful environment.

As Dr Xanthe Mallett discovers,

one of the more insidious is marine debris,

the lethal flotsam and jetsam of ocean trade.

I have a really rare privilege today to be going out with

the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service

and we're actually on the hunt for a ghost net.

Ghost nets are a major concern here,

a hazard to sea traffic and marine life.

Carried across vast distances by currents and tides,

the nets are roaming and fishing indiscriminately...

a floating wall of death.

Australia shares its northern seas with the expanding

populations of Southeast Asia.

With increasing demand on declining fish stocks,

fishing is getting harder.

So bigger boats are fishing with bigger nets,

which can be lost or discarded,

only to drift the oceans for months or even years,

becoming ghost nets.

Two hours from port, they've spotted a net,

As Northern Territories Fisheries' Simon Xuereb tells me.

The tide's dropped now, it's just poking its head up.

You can see there's not a lot of floats up top

-and it is definitely caught on a reef.

-It looks quite small, though.

Is that one a problem? Something that size?

'Everything is a problem. So, we've seen nets about 40cm by 40cm,

'pieces of net and those things have killed turtles,'

just by himself.

So a panel that's about that big, as big as a rubbish bin lid,

is a potential killer for turtle and wildlife.

-This is a Taiwanese net.

-Taiwanese?

-Taiwanese.

-How do you know?

-Mainly by the knitting and the mesh.

And as you can see that is just a very efficient thin gauge killer.

So a lot of fish will get caught up in this easily.

Would this have washed in from outside Australian waters?

This has been more travelled than backpackers.

This thing here might have been in the water for,

with the green slime on it, for up to maybe two years or a year, at least.

Oh, really!

The net is caught on a reef 12m down.

Captain Nathan Crofts and Simon will wrap a line around it

to gauge its weight and size.

With the line in place, the boat moves forward...

..and the rope that can carry two-and-a-half tonnes...

snaps!

Well, the big boat just moved 50m and that's moved on a big angle.

That net's massive underneath, so that is the tip of the iceberg.

That thing may even be going five to six,

maybe even ten tonne, who knows?

It's a big net.

Having ascertained the size of the ghost net,

the crew secures it and marks its location.

The net will be retrieved and destroyed by a specialist vessel.

It's been a good day for this multi-agency crew...

another hazard to shipping and marine life successfully eliminated.

The north coast of Australia teems with life, both onshore and off.

But what Mother Nature supplies in abundance, she can also destroy,

with fury and without excuse.

It was Christmas Eve, 1974.

As the good folk of Darwin were rushing to finish the shopping

and wrapping presents for the big day ahead, out in the harbour,

an occasional peril was gathering menace.

A depression in the Arafura Sea was tracking slowly southwest.

But then, after passing close to Bathurst Island,

it turned a sharp left, intensified

and Cyclone Tracy slammed into Darwin at midnight,

recording winds of 217km per hour,

until the wind gauge itself was shattered.

-RECORDING:

-The term Merry Christmas will probably almost be

a dirty term for Darwin people following Cyclone Tracy.

And one of the sad things about it is that

I don't think anyone really took the danger seriously.

Sun down on Christmas Eve, there's a bit more wind, a bit more rain.

But I don't think anyone was going to allow it

to spoil their Christmas.

The cyclone gradually built up to a crescendo,

with ever increasing noise, companied by smashing glass

and, um...tearing roofs.

And then it was quite classical

because in the middle, we had a very brief lull,

rather than a complete calm, a lull.

-RECORDING:

-We even went in and assured the kids

that Santa would be able to brave Cyclone Tracy without any trouble.

Then Tracy really struck.

There had been damage. There had been sheets of iron torn off roofs.

There had been roof joists torn away and these came back at us

from a different angle at possibly twice the speed of the first stage.

In the morning's gloom, the city counted its losses.

49 dead, a further 16 lost at sea.

70% of homes and buildings destroyed...

no-one escaped unscathed.

A flying sheet of iron off the roof next door

flew through the bedroom window.

The next thing I knew I was flying out with the refrigerator

and the kitchen sink and the cupboards.

It's a complete house. Walls...walls and all just disappeared...

leaving us out in the yard.

Just picked us up and threw us.

And what happened to your wife?

My wife was killed.

-Flying debris?

-Debris.

Essential services were severed.

Food and shelter at a premium.

Such was the devastation, an airlift was organised,

the biggest peacetime evacuation ever undertaken in this country.

Many residents drove out.

Within weeks, three-quarters of the population had left.

Those that stayed had to face the massive clean-up task

and begin the rebuilding of a city.

It was a Christmas to forget.

The people who are the Darwinites or the Territorians,

they believe in it,

I believe in it and I believe that Darwin has a great future.

40 years on and Darwin is a boom town of mining and tourism,

a multicultural gateway to Asia...

proof again that these are no ordinary people

that enjoy life along this recalcitrant coastline

Living on this coast also requires a unique antenna for wildlife.

Australia has no shortage of beasties that can bring

a sunny bushwalk or a dip in the sea to a premature end.

Up here is an age-old survivor that rules its domain

both on land and sea.

Marine scientist Dr Emma Johnston delves into the danger zone.

In the Top End of Australia,

headlines like these sell many a newspaper

and fuel our morbid fascination with one of nature's great survivors.

But our relationship may be about to change for the better.

And that's what I'm here to investigate.

In the natural world, when humans run foul of crocodiles,

we usually come off second best.

If the bite and death roll doesn't kill,

then the subsequent infection can be lethal...

..because crocs can carry bacteria and diseases that are foreign

to humans and don't respond to our antibiotics.

But after vicious encounters, wounded crocodiles can live on,

without succumbing to infection, even in filthy waters.

It must be something in the blood...

'and that sparked the interest of Dr Adam Britton,

'a zoologist who's been studying crocodiles for 17 years.'

You see it all the time.

You see a wild crocodile, you pull them out of the river

and they're missing an arm

or they've got this giant gash down their stomach.

You see it in captivity as well.

I mean, there's really horrific injuries.

And a week later, it's completely healed.

So, their immune system's doing something really cool.

-And can we test this?

-Well, we can.

-Can I see it in action?

We can, actually.

We can do a really, really simple test which hopefully will work.

So what I'm going to need is some crocodile blood

but I'm also going to need some of your blood.

I want to show you just how effective crocodile blood is

against your blood, which is going to be pretty useless in comparison.

It's high tide in Darwin Harbour

and I've got to get some crocodile blood.

I'm joining Northern Territory Parks Rangers

Tom Nichols, Rachel Pearce and Dani Best,

to inspect traps as part of their monitoring of crocodile health

and numbers which have increased significantly

since hunting was banned in 1971.

How many years have you been working here?

I've been working with Parks and Wildlife 33, nearly 34 years.

Things have definitely changed a lot.

When I first started, obviously crocodiles weren't a problem.

They were still on the endangered species list.

Now there are more than 100,000 crocs,

which means the increased likelihood of contact between us and them.

-So, has anyone ever been bitten?

-I've been bitten once, but, yeah.

-Wow. When did that happen?

-Oh, ten years ago now.

-Right.

'Up here, I guess you'd call that a flesh wound?'

The traps are set using cuts from a wild boar carcass

and are checked three times a week.

Captured crocs are recorded and then given to local farms.

So, what's Rachel doing now?

Rachel's... see the zip tie in her hand?

The snout rope will be going down through the centre of that

and then she will put that behind the rope,

close the jaws and that locks the jaws tight.

OK, open that front gate up.

Whoa.

Wow.

She's covering up those eyes again.

One, two, three.

OK, from here we're just going to take a blood sample.

So we'll see if we can get one.

Sometimes you can't always get it, but we'll see what happens.

'Got the croc blood.

'Now it's my turn.

'In this experiment, Adam is hoping to show that crocodile blood

'kills more bacteria than human blood.'

Well, we're going to take a very small amount of this

and put it onto these agar plates.

Now each one of these has got a colony of bacteria on it,

evenly spread.

We put one drop there on the crocodile side

and then also do the same with the human serum here.

What will happen is,

if there's any anti bacterial properties in the serum,

then it will kill the bacteria adjacent to the spot.

After a night in the incubator,

the bacteria cultures are ready for viewing.

-Do you want to have a look down there.

-Sure.

-Focus on there.

So on the left we've got the crocodile

and on the right we've got the human.

We can see that the crocodile blood bacteria kill zone

is twice as large as for human blood.

So, what's it actually doing to the bacteria?

Well, we've identified a protein and the way this protein seems to work

is it attaches itself to the bacteria and literally tears open a hole.

So all the bacteria's cell contents leak out and it kills it.

So even against the famous antibiotic resistant bugs

like golden staph?

Or even antibiotic resistant bacteria.

This antibiotic that we've found is effective against it.

That's pretty potent, exciting stuff.

Plenty of potential for human medical applications

but clearly, the research will take time.

So, after a history of mutual antagonism,

crocodiles have secrets that may yet turn

one of nature's most resilient killers,

into one of our greatest saviours.

And wouldn't that make a great headline?

This coast took four attempts to settle.

It's capital was twice laid low

and twice reborn.

These are exceptional people on the frontier of northern Australia.

They are stoic and convinced about a steady life on an intemperate coast.

This has been a fascinating stretch of coastline to visit,

but it's also challenging in so many different ways.

But if you can overcome the challenges,

if they don't break you, then they'll make you stronger

and eventually, they'll win you over completely.

Next time,

Dr Xanthe Mallett investigates a mass murder...

These people were either strangled or stabbed.

-It's easy to kill someone without leaving a mark.

-Yeah, yeah.

..nirvana, at least for Professor Tim Flannery...

These black rocks, they're not just rocks.

They're some of the oldest living things on our planet.

..Dr Emma Johnston, up close with a 60-million-year-old fish...

and I'm tracing the mystery of a lost Australian battle cruiser.

And why does no-one get off of Sydney alive?

Those stories and more from Western Australia's Coral Coast.