Driver is an inner-city

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

of Palmerston. It is 23 km SE of the Darwin CBD. Its

Local Government Area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a federated state, state, province, division (politica ...

is the

City of Palmerston The City of Palmerston is a local government area of the Northern Territory of Australia. It contains the suburbs of Darwin's satellite city, Palmerston, and is situated between the outer industrial areas of Darwin and the rural areas of How ...

. Durack is bounded to the north by University Ave, to the west Elrundie Avenue, to the east Temple Terrace and to the south Tilston Avenue. The suburb is mostly composed of developments from the early 1980s.

History

Driver was named after Arthur Driver, an engineer who came from

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

and was appointed by the Australian government as

Administrator of the Northern Territory The administrator of the Northern Territory is an official appointed by the governor-general of Australia to represent the Crown in right of the Northern Territory. They perform functions similar to those of a state governor. Strictly speaking ...

in 1946. The highlights of his five-year term include the rescue in 1947 of Bas Wie upon his stowaway arrival in Darwin from Indonesia and his term as the first President of the Legislative Council which begun in 1948. By this time, Driver had embarked on the decentralisation process of establishing Elliott as the focal point between Darwin and

Alice Springs Alice Springs () is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; it is the third-largest settlement after Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and Palmerston, Northern Territory, Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William ...

in the centre of the Territory. Fry Court in Driver was named after Mr Charles Fry, a teamster who arrived with

George Goyder George Woodroffe Goyder (24 June 1826 – 2 November 1898) was a surveyor in the Colony of South Australia during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He rose rapidly in the civil service, becoming Assistant Surveyor-General by 1856 ...

's survey expedition in 1869 to found the colony of Port Darwin. His wife and family arrived with the first European women in January 1870. Fry drowned off the north Queensland coast when the

SS Gothenburg SS ''Gothenburg'' was an iron-hulled sail- and steamship that was built in England in 1854 and sailed between England and Sweden until 1862. She then moved to Australia, where she operated across the Tasman Sea to and from New Zealand until 18 ...

sank in February 1875, after striking a section of the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

in cyclonic conditions.NT Government (2008).
NT Place Names Register: Fry Court. Retrieved 6 February 2008.

References

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20080123190745/http://www.nt.gov.au/lands/lis/placenames/origins/greaterdarwin.shtml#d {{City of Palmerston suburbs Suburbs of Darwin, Northern Territory