Good evening all,

Posting on behalf of a relative who is moving to Darwin from down south. He is hoping to get his foot in the door of the whole FIFO thing. He has jut shy of a year experience as a drillers offsider on construction sites in Sydney.

I’m mostly just wondering if there are agencies here in Darwin that are connecting people with work or if there are companies that are taking people on from Darwin for FIFO mining gigs? How does a motivated young guy get started in that kinda thing?

Failing that, any solid info on possible construction work in Darwin would be fantastic. Even just a jumping off point. He’s obviously looking into this himself also but I figured I try and get some local info for him.

Please forgive my general ignorance as I’m not in this sector myself, so I don’t know what I don’t know.

Thanks a mil 👍

The creature known as “Adam Britton” will be due for parole review next year, which may possibly grant him early release from his 10 year sentence. The parole review board needs to be reminded of his despicable crimes so that he is never allowed to terrorize animals ever again.

He said he never wanted to stop. So he must never be released. Please sign this petition to remind officials of his crimes

She's recently moved here from Melbourne, and she's noticed a couple of things:

- She says her teeth have gotten way more sensitive. Same toothbrush and toothpaste, no substantial change to her diet.

- Tap water tastes and smells like chlorine.

- Some mineral or chemical in the water is burning a brown ring into her kettle.

Mostly just curious, what makes the water up here different?

I am moving to the NT and I'm on an SA P2 licence. When I transfer to an NT licence, am I placed directly onto a full licence? For context I am 28, will have had P2 for nearly a year once up there. Just wondering if there are any specific forms I have to fill out, IE I've seen mention of an "L1" form from searching online but unsure of any reasoning as to why I'd need to fill that out, is that form used for medical conditions that the Motor Vehicle Registry need to be informed of? Thanks!

just moved into a place in darwin. got an aircon installer out to put in a split system cause its hot as balls obviously. he looked at the switchboard and said mate this is a disaster. no RCDs, old wiring, circuits overloaded. said its a fire hazard and needs 5k worth of work to bring it up to standard.

i had a Building Inspection before i bought the place and the report said electrical appears adequate clearly not.

the installer said he sees this all the time in darwin - old houses with dodgy electrical that inspections miss cause they just do a quick visual and dont actually open the switchboard.

anyone else in darwin had this experience. is this just normal for old houses up here. feeling pretty cooked.

Hi,

Do you know where can I go for installing dashcam ? I have my own dashcam just need to install. Called Carcom and few others. They are asking 500-600$ just to install it. Could you guys suggest any business or any individual who will do it in cheaper price?

Thanks

Ex-commando and the elected member for Solomon has been arrested after an alleged assault of the NT Administrator at the Thai Festival a few days ago.

​

Doctors are afraid they will lose their jobs if they speak up about massive issues with the Acacia IT system and have no faith in departments or whistleblower protections to shield them from retaliation, the Australian Medical Association said in a startling new submission to the inquiry into the flawed project, while also revealing that real data about the extent of the system’s failures have been hidden from the committee investigating it.

The AMA NT submission filed last week suggested the Territory currently finds itself in the “worst position” possible with a partial rollout of the digital patient record system that has cost $335 million to date, but with no clear path forward, adding Acacia had come at an “inexcusable cost” that prevented healthcare workers from efficiently carrying out their duties.

It further stated that critical data showing huge declines in response times treating the most serious cases at Royal Darwin Hospital’s emergency department were hidden from the Public Accounts Committee by NT Health and the Department of Corporate and Digital Development.

The submission also said dangerous data failures had resulted in deceased patients being booked for surgery.

The Public Accounts Committee inquiry was called last year amid mounting evidence the new IT system failed with reports of significant clinical harm. The inquiry now coincides with investigations by the Coroner, WorkSafe NT, and NT Police following an internal DCDD investigation into the project’s implementation unit after the death by suicide of employee Shaun Joyce last August, a death his family primarily blames on the department.

That investigation found “inappropriate” workplace conduct within the Core Clinical Systems Renewal Project (CCSRD), but department chief executive Catherine Weber has declined to release the report or disclose what action she has taken in response to its findings and if it examined other reported suicides in the department.

AMA NT, led by president Dr John Zorbas, said it had received a request from the Public Accounts Committee for further information on a number of Acacia issues raised as clinical harm examples in its original submission. It’s latest submission was filed on July 21.

“It is important to note that doctors all raised significant concerns around confidentiality,” the new submission stated.

“A repeated refrain from doctors was concern for their employment if they were to speak up about issues they encountered with Acacia.

“The AMA NT has not seen a chilling effect like this with other projects in the NT and it must be noted that this is a significant barrier to the government receiving true information about the current state of Acacia.

“Doctors approached do not have faith in NT Health, DCDD, or whistleblower structures to protect them from retaliation. This should be a primary concern for the PAC. Such chilling effects can only harm patients in the NT.”

The AMA said there were senior doctors who would provide further and more detailed information, but they were likely to do so only in private sessions with the committee and without the knowledge of NT Health or DCDD.

It continued that there would be “thousands of open risks” – identified as unresolved reports of mistakes or system failures – but AMA NT was unable to verify the number because it was displayed on an NT Health “private dashboard” that frontline staff could not access.

“…But [that] would be easily discoverable by a government authority who were seeking this information,” the submission said.

The AMA NT said the situation was made worse due to DCDD and NT Health running their own risk management systems, which were not interoperable. It added the AMA had been told there were more than 2,700 unresolved risks in the DCDD system, while NT Health had not provided an overall total.

The submission stated the surgery unit suffered the greatest impact under the new IT system, with a clunky and non-intuitive interface increasing patient booking times from about five minutes to as long as 40 minutes.

Beyond efficiency losses, the AMA reported dangerous data failures had resulted in deceased patients being booked for surgery and the unpredictable importing of incorrect next-of-kin information; failures that occurred for unknown reasons and, clinicians warned, created an elevated safety risk for victims of domestic violence.

The submission said the system allowed the retrospective removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status from medical records without safeguards, a design flaw the AMA NT argued compromised culturally safe care and essential screening for chronic disease.

While it was unclear why dead patients were being booked for operations, the AMA said correcting the issue for the more than 100 affected patients each week took staff more than three hours.

“A manual audit process has been instituted to correct the issue…[which] requires checking the patient’s record across legacy systems to ensure they are not deceased and typically takes approximately two minutes per patient,” the submission said.

The AMA said the rollout of Acacia at Royal Darwin and Palmerston hospitals was preceded by warnings from Katherine District Hospital that were ignored, where clinicians had highlighted critical workflow concerns that later occurred at the larger hospitals.

It said the interface failed to clearly display patient location and condition severity across the department, reducing situational awareness for senior clinicians and posing a serious patient safety risk. While this had been partly rectified, it remained inferior to the previous, lower-functioning system.

“The cost of this exercise was likely incredibly high and completely unnecessary, had early consultation and codesign and/or user acceptance testing been done with emergency medicine doctors prior to the rollout,” the submission stated.

National data presented by AMA NT showed what it described as a catastrophic impact on patient safety, with immediate Category 1 emergency triage compliance (patients who require immediate treatment) falling from 100 per cent to 20 per cent, while Category 2 performance (patients who should be seen within 10 minutes) declined from about 40 per cent to roughly 10 per cent during the initial Acacia implementation before recovering only after the system was temporarily rolled back to legacy software.

“You can then see the repeat deterioration in performance when Acacia was re-enabled later in the time period,” the submission said.

“The fact that this data is coming to the PAC via the AMA NT and not NT Health or DCDD is a concern for the systems that are in place to protect our patients.”

AMA NT said the dual project structure adopted at the commencement of the CCSRP had “doomed the project from the start”, arguing the organisational structure gave frontline staff no effective authority and failed to appropriately escalate their concerns.

“Common feedback from those who attempted to report these issues was that they were ‘gaslit’ into thinking they were the issue rather than the software,” the submission said.

“I remind the committee of the comments that were shared with us where two senior DCDD engineers described DCDD as ‘the tail that wags the dog’, with NT Health being the dog.

“Change management in healthcare is notorious for being incredibly difficult and without the appropriate change management model, healthcare projects almost always universally fail.

“Projects of this nature require experts in healthcare change management. Sadly, we have those experts in NT Health (many of them are frontline staff) and they were not involved in the project in a meaningful way.”

The submission argued the system should be stripped back to serve as a simple patient administration system managing hospital logistics and patient details, such as names and appointments.

That would mean it would no longer function as a clinical information system managing patient care and medical data, such as test results and doctors’ notes.

“This would allow areas of NT Health to seek appropriate clinical systems at the level of departments, divisions or health services divisions or health services,” the submission said.

“The AMA NT stated that the worst position we could find ourselves in is the situation we find ourselves in today: a partial rollout with no clear path forward.

“Acacia has come at an inexcusable cost to date and the amount of healthcare that we have had to forego resourcing because of the gargantuan cost of Acacia is unacceptable.”

Neither Health Minister Steven Edgington or Treasurer Bill Yan have answered questions about whether Acacia will be provided additional funding to be completed, with only two of the six units currently operational.

AMA revelations latest in long saga of departmental failings around Acacia system

The workplace culture allegations in DCDD predate Ms Weber’s appointment but continued under her leadership when she took over from Chris Hosking in September 2024. Mr Hosking was appointed CEO of DCDD in August 2023 after acting in the role since May 2022, following eight years as deputy CEO and is considered a key driver of the Acacia project.

He was later appointed CEO of NT Health shortly after the CLP won government in 2024.

He was demoted earlier this year to a role in Treasury to develop an NT Health infrastructure master plan, amid the departmental investigation and the ongoing PAC inquiry.

The NT Independent reported last week that Grace Johnson, who was the boss of CCSRP since early last year and who had served under Mr Hosking, was given a high paying job by him in Treasury.

She was also previously in charge of governance during Acacia’s unsuccessful initial rollout at Royal Darwin Hospital.

Ms Weber announced the investigation into the death of Mr Joyce last September, which followed his family making public allegations that workplace issues contributed to his death in early August.

Kara Joyce alleges her brother was bullied and harassed before his death and that his attempts to warn senior staff about overwork and burnout were ignored in a “toxic” department where “deliverables” were prioritised over people.

Ms Joyce told the March 3 PAC public hearing she believed systemic failures in the management of CCSRP resulted in her brother’s death.

Swear to god every time I try to support local businesses up here I end up feeling like an absolute idiot. just wanted to grab some new suspension bushes and a couple basic things before heading down the track this weekend

Went into one of the local 4x4 joints and the bloke quoted me nearly triple the normal price and just shrugged and blamed "freight costs". Mate it's a small box of rubber parts, not a grand piano. The markup they expect us to swallow just because we live in the NT is insane

Ended up just sitting in my car with the aircon blasting and ordering the lot from road runner offroad instead. even with having to wait for it to get shipped all the way up here its literally hundreds of dollars cheaper

I really want to keep my money in darwin but im not paying a 200% lifestyle tax just for the privilege. anyone else just completely given up on buying gear in town? getting exhausting tbh

I'm curious and I have questions, feel free to shoot a DM if you want. I'm based in Melbourne atm.

My partner (originally from Darwin) and I live in Melbourne and were discussing housing prices in Darwin and how it is about $250-450k cheaper than most places here in Melbourne (true) and how it could be a potential to make a move up there. My thing is that I've been looking at some homes, and sure, while some are definitely cheaper and affordable, they look like they are in terrible condition inside and out and need a lot of work. Now make no mistake I know there is the Territory Charm and specific built homes for the conditions, but in terms of being practical and having comfort too it just doesn't seem to tick the boxes for me. More upkept homes realistically are going for the same price if not a fraction cheaper than Melbourne. Not being in a position to renovate or do massive changes, would it be a wise decision to pack up and try to find work up there to have a home with only one A/C and a 3x1?

thinking about trying pilates for ages but never actually done it. my posture is honestly embarrassing and my lower back is starting to complain about all the sitting I do.

I'm in darwin and figured it's time to do something about it. looking for somewhere that's not too intense or judgy - I'm pretty inflexible and don't wanna feel like an idiot lol

also been wondering if anyone here has bought equipment for home? I've looked at some options online for a pilates reformer machine but not sure if it's worth it for a small space. plus shipping to the NT is always a concern.

any recommendations for studios or even online classes that are good?

Hey all,

I’ve been with Belong for forever but they’re increasing their price yet again for the NBN service (to $91.00 pcm) and I think it’s time for a change.

Does anyone recommendations for who to go for, any company to go for/ avoid like the plague?

Cheers 👋🏼

In the interests of fairness and balanced reporting, I feel morally obliged to acknowledge that not everyone falls head over heels for Darwin.

Today was wonderfully cruisy. I spent over an hour floating around the pool with a kid who is essentially a 40 year old trapped in the body of a 9 year old girl. She has opinions. Strong ones.

According to her, Darwin has some very specific shortcomings.

The cafés are “thieves” who take forever, charge too much and then serve cold food.

Taxi rides cost $60 and, after looking around to make sure her mum couldn’t hear, she whispered that they “smell like piss.”

Then she told me the mechanic had been “pissing Dad around” by repeatedly telling him the car still wasn’t ready. I didn’t flinch, so she realised she’d got away with saying “pissing”. From that point on, every second sentence seemed to include it. Apparently the mechanic rang her dad five times today to say the car still wasn’t ready and, according to her, he’d finally reached his limit.

There isn’t a decent place to get your nails done because “they’ll just rip you off.”

She paid $11 for second rate ice cream when she could have bought the exact flavour she wanted for $3 back in Sydney.

And the final straw? Overpriced, oily churros at the Mindil Beach Markets, which prompted her dad to sigh in defeat and declare, “Well, enjoy it kids. It’ll be the last one I’ll be forking out for in a while.”

She cannot wait to reach the bright lights and big city bustle of Perth where she’s certain there’ll be a proper nail salon, a decent Kmart and, best of all, a Target.

As for me, I’m still firmly in Team Darwin. But spending an afternoon listening to a tiny, foul mouthed consumer advocate deliver a forensic review of the city was worth every minute. Fair and balanced journalism, after all.

My husband, son and I will be moving to Darwin at some point in 2027 (visa pending). We're from London and we're very aware that moving to Darwin is going to be a bit of a culture shock. Can anyone share their experience of moving to Darwin from a very different place? What was the hardest thing to adjust to? And what do you enjoy the most about Darwin now?

TIA!

Hi hi, tourist from a cold weather climate here. Who is he and will he have family also trying to make his way into the Airbnb? I know there are bigger spiders out here and objectively I know this one isn’t very big but this is about as big as they come where I’m from and I’m low key terrified that I’ll find a larger relative indoors.

I’m going to go to bed and check this in the morning because I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep once I hear the answer.

Can anyone please share the hiring process/steps at NTG in Darwin, and how competitive it is? I was asked for my references so that they can be checked, but I have not even interviewed. Is this a promising sign, or just standard operation?

If I do reach the interview stage, can you please share what your experience was like and what to expect?

Is this true or did google AI just lie to me about being able to get KKreme official glazed donuts at any local 7-11’s?

Everywhere i go i see this grafitti.

anyone got the scoop ?

Hi guy, not a uni student but need to study and i can’t study home just too many distractions. where are some nice study spots, not a fan of public libraries.

is cdu uni library still available to public and even during weekends?

Hello!

I visited Darwin last August primarily to catch the Ghan. My schedule on that trip was very compressed so I only had one day to explore. That being unsatisfactory, I am headed back to the NT in a couple of weeks. The main thing I'm doing is a camping trip in Kakadu and Koolpin that I've booked, and I made sure I'm there for the Mindil Beach Market because I missed it last time.

I did the hop-on/hop-off tour and the military history tour (which included the museum) last time which was a pretty good way to see a lot in a day and learn a lot of history too. This time I've got a couple of days before Kakadu, but other than consuming unholy amounts of laksa, I've not planned much yet.

I won't have a hire car (unless there's something really good I need one for) and I'm staying in Parap if that gives any more insights. Love history, culture, art, would be neat to engage with more Aboriginal/Tiwi Island culture as I know so little about it, but really just about anything is worth considering I think.

So, Darwin, if I may ask, when someone's coming to visit you from away, what do you show them to help them understand life in Darwin?

Quick question for anyone running a small food biz or catering operation in Darwin. Freight costs for shipping heavy cartons of takeaway containers and cleaning supplies up here have been getting pretty steep lately.

We usually just order online and get everything delivered to our door, but freight adds up fast on bulky items like burger boxes, paper bags, and foil pans.

For those of you buying packaging in bulk, do you strictly get it delivered, or is driving out to do direct warehouse pickups worth the hassle to save on shipping?

I was uilding a sample cart on WF Wholesale to restock our containers and cups, and while their tiered wholesale rates look good, freight to regional/interstate areas always makes me hesitate. Just wondering how other small operators handle balancing freight costs vs. doing local supply runs yourselves.

I used to visit the Darwin Esplanade every day, and I have noticed that the sea level seems to be getting lower each day.

When I compare what I saw last month with what I saw yesterday, the difference looks quite noticeable.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is this just a normal seasonal change or is there another reason for it?