Definately a yucky situation. Could have been handled a lot better.
I would recommend passing your feedback to Australian Airlines (Qantas) via this link:
http://qantas.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/q...nduser/ask.php
Ground staff are sometimes put into situations where they have little prior experience and don't handle the situation as well as they could. Maybe poor training from Qantas, but maybe also representative of the fact that Qantas doesn't have as many issues like these as some other airlines (esp. from Darwin!)
I agree Darwin CBD isn't that special, but there are some good tourist spots in Darwin, and I have thought that the view of the ocean from Darwin is particularly amazing. For tourists, Darwin tends to just be a springboard onto the other Northern Territory tourist places.