The Larrakia people are the traditional owners of the lands and waters in and surrounding the Darwin local government area. Darwin is known as Garramilla in
Gulumirrgin, one of the languages of the Larrakia people, but there are many place names within the area. The first
British person to see Darwin harbour appears to have been Lieutenant
John Lort Stokes of
HMS Beagle on 9 September 1839. The ship's captain, Commander
John Clements Wickham, named the port after
Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who had sailed with them both on the earlier
second expedition of the Beagle. In the early 1870s, Darwin felt the effects of a
gold rush at
Pine Creek after employees of the
Australian Overland Telegraph Line found gold while digging holes for telegraph poles. On 5 February 1869,
George Goyder, the
Surveyor General of South Australia, established a small settlement of 135 people at Port Darwin. Goyder named the settlement Palmerston, after the
British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. In 1870, the first poles for the
Overland Telegraph were erected in Darwin, connecting Australia to the rest of the world. The discovery of gold at
Pine Creek in the 1880s further boosted the young territory's development. Upon Commonwealth administration in 1911, Darwin became the city's official name. ==Geography==