Day 98

Day 98 Tennant Creek

Well we made it into Tennant Creek safe and sound. It was a long-ish day of driving but quite a good

My Ice Machine and my cooker

Best looking thing in Elliott

one. We headed off from Elliott about 10 ish. Maureen got up this morning about 7 and as she opened

About time!

Where have you been

the door to Girt, was greeted by 7 or 8 local birds about half the size of a magpie, all screaming at her like she was late to feed them and they had been waiting! Keep up with the program! They put on quite a show until she got a slice of bread and fed them. They were quite happy with a couple of pieces each and flew off, possibly to terrorise some other traveller. There were two other couples at the park with us, one French couple and a pair of old crusties in their big van, polished to within an inch of its life. The

Police road block

Attack Creek - John Stuart

French couple are here for a year and had bought their own camper van and had left Perth about the same time as us. We said good bye and moved out. As we got to the main road there were 2 cop cars set up as a road block and according to the servo guy as we dropped off keys said, they do it regularly to check licences and rego’s as some forget to do them before they leave. He was quite chatty until after Maureen asked what was good to look at in town and he said he was the only good thing in town to see, so she went to take his picture and he went all shy!

Anyway, we left Elliott and headed south. We stopped off at Attack Creek where there is a memorial

Attack Creek Memorial

repacking car for mozzie net or drugs?

to John Stuart who reached there in 1860 on one of his treks. He turned back due to aboriginal attacks and illness in his team. He returned on other trips and eventually made it to the top. At the same location there was a memorial to a mounted policeman who was killed near there in 1883. After morning tea there and a chat with another French couple who were heading north and had stopped to empty out the car of all their things and set up a mosquito net because they had been to Cairns and had been eaten alive with them.

Stock Mustering by horse

Stock mustering on side of road

We informed them that Darwin does not have a mozzie problem or flies, but they were going to be prepared!

We headed off and before long had to pull over. There was a big mob of cows on the side of the road that were being mustered by a group of horsemen! They were a group of aboriginal men using horses to muster the stock, we had passed another young man on an off road motorbike just minutes before we spotted them, so I think they had switched to horses for the slower pace when near the road. Whatever the reason, they were doing something that

John Flynn Memorial

Three Way - original name!

used to be everyday up here and is rarely seen today.

As we arrived at Three Ways, there is this really big Memorial to Flynn of the outback. Now John Flynn started up the Flying Doctor service way back in the early 1900’s and started at Clontarf on Queensland and he had 15 hospitals spread across the country, none of them in Three Ways, so what the relevance of this huge structure is here it does not say, but worth every cent I am sure and made sense to someone at the time.

Just short of Tennant Creek there is a turnoff to an overland telegraph station. As I mentioned earlier,   

The old Stuart Highway - how skinny?

Telegraph repeater station

these were set up to relay messages from Darwin down to Adelaide in 1872 and there was cable from Darwin to Singapore. At every station along the route ( there were 11)they would receive the week signal and then retype it in to go to the next station. As a techno lover, this is just amazing to me, there would be these groups of people sitting in these buildings (see the pictures) in all the heat in full 3 piece suits (because they were GPO workers and there is a standard set) receiving then resending telegrams all

Accommodation and Blacksmith

Cool room with cellar

day and night. They were little communities in their own right as they were located not where there were towns, but where they were needed. The Stuart Highway was also created by them. It was the original track for maintenance workers and then grew in importance during WWII when they decided to have a road able to be used all year round rather than just seasonally and started sealing it over the years. As we entered into the station, there is a little monolith on a section of the old highway that shows just how narrow it was. Anyway, these stations were little self sufficient communities as they had to be given

Smoke house

that they had to operate 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. They had cold rooms dug into the ground, smoke houses to cure meat, Kitchen areas, a Blacksmith as well as all the accommodation for staff. It is strange to think that the telegraph road was followed by explorers who went in to the wilds off it to open up the land. Even as early as 1890, there were tourists who would cycle up the track! Some never made it but others did, one went up the east coast, across the Gulf to Darwin and then down the middle, all on a deadly treadly! We get excited when they ride across the Nullarbor plane and it is tarmac all the way!

Back on the road and into Tennant Creek. This was the site of the last big gold rush in Australia. In

Gold Sample

Even blind freddy found gold

1933 a linesman from the telegraph station was given some gold by an aboriginal stockman and the rush was on. The saddest part in this was the locals, the Warumunga people, missed out all round. The biggest problem with the area was fresh water. There were very few places with secure clean water and naturally they were where the tribes were. Along comes all this industry and people and the fight is on, in some cases, quite literally. In some cases there were attacks on camel trains coming through as the camels would drink all the water or muddy it up and so the locals attacked them. Later as gold was found, it was declared a “Gold Field” and as such, they were banned from going on to it and were turfed out!

Found the wheel barrow Rob

Reading a series of letters

There is a great museum that covers the Social History of the town and it is perfect. It has some facts and figures in it but it just has pictures of how life was over the time. They have a great series of letters written by a lady over the years that shows how things changed, the hardships, the great fun, tragedies and the growing pains of the town. The stories around the museum are excellent and we spent a long time there. One of the biggest finds was by two stockmen, one was blind and the other only had one

How can you concentrate when the toilet is looking back at you?

Old mine

operating eye. I kid you not, they would go out and one would feel the gold and the other would look until he found it. They did this on more than one occasion. Another guy made his fortune then went away travelling around Australia with his own Brass Band with him for his entertainment, better than a radio, which did not work in Tennant Creek. Then when the money ran out, he came back and made himself another fortune and went off again. I went to go to the toilet there, but when I looked into the toilet, there were 6 sets of eyes looking back at me! I just could not bring myself to ruin their day. Some hung around until Maureen took a picture.

View from lookout

A quick trip to the local Lookout and we went back to town and setup at the Outback Caravan Park where we had a swim, cooked tea and now blogging. Tomorrow is  Alice Springs.