The Tennant Creek Telegraph Station is an historical site about 16 kilometres north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The Tennant Creek Telegraph Station is an historical site about 16 kilometres north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The Warumungu Aboriginal people were the first occupants of the region in and around Tennant Creek. The telegraph station is near a very significant sacred site called "Jurnkurakurr", which is home to a Dreamtime being called "Jalawala", a black-nosed python. [1]
The Tennant Creek Telegraph Station was built in 1872. It was first a temporary bush timber building but by 1875 had been rebuilt with locally quarried stone. [2] It operated as a repeater station as part of the Overland Telegraph Line which connected Darwin to Adelaide. It also operated as a government rations depot. By the 1920s it featured a blacksmith shop, cart shed, ration store, meat house, smokehouse and cellar. Warumungu people were employed at the station as cattlemen and slaughter-men. But the 1890s more than 100 Aboriginal people were living at the station. It was declared an Aboriginal Reserve. [3]
The search for gold began from the 1880s. [4] In 1925, a linesman discovered gold, with the discovery quickly leading to the establishment of a township to the south of the telegraph station. In 1935 a post and wireless office became operational in the town of Tennant Creek itself, [5] so that the telegraph station was closed. It then reverted to a rations depot, supplying meat to the new town and water from its bore until 1966. [6]
| Postmasters/Managers | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Alan M. Giles [7] | 1875 | 1888 |
| Henry Herbert Dixon | 1915 | 1923 |
| J. W. M. Phillips [3] | 1926 | 1927 |
The station was listed on the now-defunct Register of the National Estate on 25 March 1986. [8] The station was listed on the Northern Territory Heritage Register on 4 July 2001. [1] The land including the Telegraph Station and its immediate surroundings was originally proposed in 1987 as a historical reserve known as the Tennant Creek Telegraph Station Historical Reserve but progress was delayed by a claim on the land made under Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) in 1980 . The claim was resolved in August 2001 with the historical reserve awaiting official naming in April 2002. [9] Significant restoration work was undertaken on the remaining station buildings in 2012. [10]
The Northern Territory is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, and Queensland to the east. To the north, the territory looks out to the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, including Western New Guinea and other islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
Karlu Karlu / Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia located in the locality of Warumungu about 105 km (65 mi) south of Tennant Creek, and 393 km (244 mi) north of Alice Springs. The nearest settlement is the small town of Wauchope located 9 km (5.6 mi) to the south.
Tennant Creek is a town located in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is the seventh largest town in the Northern Territory, and is located on the Stuart Highway, just south of the intersection with the western terminus of the Barkly Highway. At the 2016 census, Tennant Creek had a population of approximately 3,000, of which more than 50% (1,536) identified themselves as indigenous.
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The Warumungu are a group of Aboriginal Australians of the Northern Territory. Today, Warumungu are mainly concentrated in the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs.
Connells Lagoon Conservation Reserve also known as Dalgajini is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia.
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