RESTAURANTS in Darwin are pretty fussy: 'No shirt, no shoes, no service,' warns one city centre eatery. Ties? Any establishment that insisted on customers wearing ties would probably go bankrupt, unless it was a bar.
For virtually no one wears a tie in this frontier town, not even for work. It's not unusual to see Darwinians heading for downtown supermarkets barefoot and topless. Well, the men, at least.
They're proud of being recognised by The Guinness Book of Records as having the biggest annual intake of beer per capita in the world. Not surprising when you see a Darwin 'stubby', a bottle that holds two litres of beer.
It's a record they managed to hold on to in spite of the fact that the city eventually ran dry after a strike lasting several months at the local brewery, a strike that forced it to close permanently.
'Another brewery is planning to open here soon,' winked a Darwinian who was here in 1974 when Cyclone Tracy ripped the town to pieces, killing 66 and destroying 60 per cent of the houses. It's the 20th anniversary next month.
Darwin's nearest neighbour of any size in Australia is Alice Springs, more than 1,500 kilometres down 'The Track', and Alice only has a population half that of Darwin, around 35,000.
This isolation has spawned a host of eccentricities that have prompted citizens in the cooler climes of the East coast to warn of the dangers of 'going troppo' in the Northern Territory.