Frog Hollow is highly valued by the Darwin community for its social, industrial relations and educational associations. It is valued as natural parkland in the central city area.
It was used as worker camps in the early years of Commonwealth jurisdiction over the NT from 1911. Living conditions were squalid and described by the Northern Standard as ‘humpies’ and ‘bag huts held together by wire’. Frog Hollow had a single tap, no toilets and mosquito-infested water pools.
By 1936, private houses were being constructed at Frog Hollow. In 1938, however, land was compulsorily acquired by the Commonwealth for military uses, including construction of a 200,000 gallon petrol tank for piping fuel to the jetty, and installation of a drainage system. A workers camp remained until the bombing of Darwin in 1942 when all land was acquired by the military. A fuel tank at Frog Hollow was destroyed in a bombing raid on 2 April 1942.
In 1949, a parliamentary inquiry recommended that a school be built on land adjacent to Frog Hollow to support the rapidly growing post-war population. Darwin Primary School opened in 1954 and closed in 1984. The buildings are now used for community arts.
