Tennant Creek, Northern Territory
Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory is the real Australia. A vast land of brilliant blue skies and boundless horizons broken by kangaroos darting across the highway, remote pubs, ancient rock art and outback characters.
Break your journey along the Stuart Highway at Tennant Creek and the Barkly Tablelands, known for its million-acre cattle stations. You will also discover a gold mining heritage, iconic rock formations and Aboriginal culture. This is genuine Outback Australia.
Tennant Creek is named after a nearby watercourse of the same name. It is the hub of the sprawling Barkly Tableland. The Tablelands vast elevated plains of black soil with golden Mitchell grass, cover more than 240,000 square kilometres.
Tennant Creek is also near well-known attractions including:
The Devils Marbles,
Mary Ann Dam,
Battery Hill Mining Centre and the
Nyinkka Nyunyu Culture Centre.
The Barkly Tableland runs east from Tennant Creek towards the Queensland border and is among the most important cattle grazing areas in the Northern Territory.
Roughly the same size as the United Kingdom or New Zealand, the region consists largely of open grass plains and some of the world’s largest cattle stations.
A few fast facts
Created around 1860 in part as a station for the Overland Telegraph Line, Tennant Creek’s population exploded in the 1930s during the gold rush. These days Tennant Creek’s main industry is tourism.
Tennant Creek was an important site during World War II, serving as the base for troops, supplies and a crucial military hospital.
Daly Waters, 4 hours north of Tennant Creek, boasts the world’s most isolated traffic lights – there isn’t another set for 500 kilometres.
Tennant Creek – nicknamed Australia’s ‘Heart of Gold’ – was once the site of the third richest gold mine in Australia.
Tennant Creek is the site of Australia’s largest earthquake ever recorded, at 6.6 on the Richter Scale in 1988. Earthquakes are incredibly rare in Australia due to our perfect location in the middle of the Australian tectonic plate.
Tennant Creek is 989 km (615 mi) from Darwin; 1,754 km (1,090 mi) from Cairns; 508 km (316 mi) from Alice Springs.
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