No one who travels along the north coast of Australia can fail to be impressed with its isolation. There are a few small settlements and missions but throughout the entire length, Darwin with a population of about 56,000
people, and Nhulunbuy with about 3,000 are the only major towns in existence to this day. About the middle of the last century change came with settlement of Europeans and Asians on the north coast. These people brought about a breakdown in tribal life and tribal barriers and introduced leprosy in the Northern Territory. The initial foci of infection were in the settled areas around Darwin, Pine Creek and the Alligator Rivers. However, increasing contact between tribes who had previously met only on rare occasions resulted in leprosy gradually spreading to almost every tribe in the northern half of the Northern Territory.