Tennant Creek Tourist Information
Tennant Creek Tourist Information
Welcome to the Tennant Creek Region, Northern Territory
Tennant Creek was named in 1860 after John Tennant, a pastoralist from Port Lincoln, South Australia by John McDouall Stuart, in gratitude for the financial help Tennant had provided for Stuart's expeditions across Australia. On his third attempt, Stuart became the first explorer to successfully cross the continent from south to north, paving the way for the construction of the telegraph line which would eventually link Australia with the outside world. In 1872 a temporary building for a repeater station was erected near the watercourse of Tennant Creek and, in 1874, the occupants of the Overland Telegraph Station completed the solid stone buildings which remain today. You can still experience this, one of the four remaining original telegraph stations. Its preserved buildings form a piece of living history and provide an insight into life as it was when the station was a friendly island of comfort and conversation for those first pioneers who travelled the long, lonely track beside the telegraph line.
The Tennant Creek Telegraph Station remained an isolated outpost until the 1930s when gold was discovered. The opening up of the rich Tennant field, abundant in gold, marked the start of Australia's last great goldrush. The story goes that Joe Kilgariff, a pioneer of the Territory, built his store in 1934 where a beer wagon had become bogged and this became the Tennant Creek Hotel. The pub is still a historic monument to those early days. William Weaber, who was totally blind and his pal, the larrikin Jack Noble, who had only one good eye, between them found the richest mines in the field - the Rising Sun; Kimberley Kids; Weaber's Find and Noble's Nob.
From the 1960s to the present, the Tennant Creek field has produced gold worth about four thousand million dollars on today's values. Tennant Creek continues to thrive with gold and copper mining being its major industry. It is also the regional centre of a rich pastoral area. The town has a population today of about three and a half thousand people.
Aborigines, an important part of the multicultural community, still maintain many of their cultural traditions. Artifacts, crafts and paintings can be viewed and purchased.
