Elliott

The second largest town on the Barkly Tableland, Elliott is the centre of droving country where many of the droving legends of the Barkly, Murranji and North-South stock routes were forged.

Location: 252 km north of Tennant Creek on Stuart Highway.

In 1917, 13 water bores were sunk in the area to provide a stable water supply to passing drovers and their cattle herds. During world war II, the Australian Army, with the assistance of the local Jingili Aboriginal people, established a personnel staging camp at No. 8 bore on the Newcastle Waters Station and the township of Elliott was born. The town's name honours Army Captain Reginald Dougloas Elliott, MBE. Relics of wartime movements around the town remain.

Unlike the nearby town of Newcastle Waters, Elliott survived the death of droving, by being on the Stuart Highway when it was sealed.

One of the town's surprises is its 9-hole golf course which has remarkably lush and verdant greens for an outback course.


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Nearby Lake Woods was once part of a huge freshwater basin that dried up during the last ice age, around 23,000 years ago. The lake is all that remains of it, having been reduced in size from 5,000 sq km to its current 420 sq km. Lake Woods is a major breeding habitat for many inland birds.

Longreach Waterhole is a natural watercourse that leads into Lake Woods and forms part of this lake. Pelicans, Cormorants, Darters, Straw neck and Glossy Black Ibis, Caspian and Gull-billed Terns, Whistling and Black kites, Brolgas, Jabiru, Large and Intermediate Herons, Finches, White winged Thrillers, Rufus Whistlers and Jacky Winter and more can be seen here.

Rennie Memorial Park has a 45-minute walk which offers an insight into the ecology of this remore inland region.

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