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Tennant Creek, NT



The Pebbles


John Flynn Memorial


Abandoned equipment at the gold mine


Overland Telegraph Station


The Devils Marbles

Tennant Creek is a place shaped by Aboriginal culture, gold mining and pastoralism. Midway by road between Alice Springs and Darwin, Tennant Creek is known as the Territory’s heart of gold; a reference to the friendliness of its people and the area’s gold mining history.

Where is it?: 995 km south of Darwin, 503 km north of Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway, 26 km south of the junction of the Stuart and Barkly Highways.

Things to see and do:

The town’s goldmining history remains, and is captured at sites around the town such as the Battery Hill Mining Centre.

The Pebbles 96 km north), mysterious granite boulders, the smaller relatives of the Karlu Karlu / Devils Marbles, form a unique and beautiful landscape. Known to the Warumungu Aboriginal people as Kunjarra, The Pebbles are a sacred site and women’s dancing place for the Munga Munga Dreaming.

Lookouts:

Events:

Surrounding area:

The surrounding region has numerous places of interest for travellers including the Attrack Creek Historical Site (74 km north)

Devils Marbles (Karlu Karlu) rock formation (104 km south)

John Flynn memorial at the junction of the Stuart and Barkly Highways (26 km north)

Tenant Creek homestead (11km north east) incroporates the old stone telegraph repeater station (built 1871)


About Tennant Creek

Tennant Creek takes its name from the nearby watercourse named in 1860 by John McDouall Stuart in acknowledgement of the financial help he received from John Tennant, a pastoralist from Port Lincoln, South Australia. Stuart became the first explorer to cross the country from south to north. This paved the way for the Overland Telegraph line, which linked Australia with the rest of the world and helped open the country for development.
In 1872 a temporary telegraph repeater station was erected near the Tennant Creek watercourse. Then in 1874 solid stone buildings were completed at the same site. These structures present a lasting tribute to the guts and determination of the brave and far-sighted men who pioneered this region. These well preserved buildings and associated structures give the visitor a unique opportunity to experience first hand the conditions which faced the prospectors and pioneers who travelled to the Territory along 'The Track' which followed the telegraph line.
The Telegraph Station remained a relatively isolated outpost until gold was discovered. Australia's last Great Goldrush in the 1930s sparked the development of a rough and tumble settlement seven miles south of the Telegraph Station, which in 1934 became the town of Tennant Creek. The township of Tennant Creek had a typical Territory start. Popular local legend has it that in 1934 Joe Kilgariff built his stores where his beer wagon became bogged, and the town simply grew around it. While the story is not true, it is indicative of the type of people who established the town. Today the Tennant Creek Hotel still operates on the same spot as a monument to those early days.
In 1936 Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, told the people of Australia that the miners in Tennant Creek had created 'the most important goldfield in the Commonwealth'. In just eighteen months, the Tennant Creek field had produced £100,000 worth of gold at a time when a man's wage reach £25 a year. The equivalent value in today's dollars would be approximately $1,500,000,000. To celebrate this achievement, on 7th August 1936 a feast of saveloys and beer was held at the galvanised iron Tennant Creek Hotel in the new township. There were bonfires and fireworks, followed by a Corroboree danced by the Warumungu aboriginal tribe and a ball held under the stars.
The Tennant Creek goldrush provided a return to the glamour and adventure associated with earlier gold rushes around Australia. Men hoping to make their fortunes came from all parts of Australia, by all manner of means to be a part of the goldrush.
While not a major part of the region's pastoral history, nonetheless Tennant Creek has played a role in the pastoral industry's evolution. It is the principal town in a district larger than many European countries. Some of the cattle stations in the area cover thousands of square kilometres and carry tens of thousands of cattle. One particular station carries up to 80,000 head of cattle. The size of these holdings may be gauged by the fact that highways heading toward Tennant Creek can go for over a hundred kilometres within a single property. To fully appreciate this, a trip along the beef road (Tablelands Highway) toward the Gulf of Carpentaria passes through endless vistas of Mitchell grass and cattle, very few trees and the 'rolling plains' and 'far horizons' of Dorothea McKeller's famous Australian poem 'My Country'.


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