To live in one of Australia’s most isolated towns, 1000km
south of Darwin and 500km north of Alice Springs, they become
as hard as its haematite, and yet as warm as the earth itself. And
they absorb its hidden heart of gold.
With a fearsome reputation, Tennant Creek is a town of wild
stories, past and present. Tales of alcohol-fuelled violence range
from a copper who shot someone over 12 bottles of whisky in
the town’s early days, to stabbings, murders and lighthearted
banter about a bloke in the pub yesterday swinging punches.
It’s a town that proudly boasts it was founded when a truck
carrying beer broke down and people set up camp around it;
where police now man the drive-in bottle shops, confiscating
alcohol or refusing to let some residents buy any (credited with
reducing annual alcohol-related assaults from 460 to 192). It
once had a mountain of longnecks higher than the Dolly Pot
Inn, and coffins were made from beer crates.
It’s a town where the instruction “turn left at the two dead
donkeys” doesn’t sound out of place; where one of the richest
goldfields was found by two blokes with one eye between them.
Nobles Nob yielded 34 tonnes over the next 45 years, and,
altogether, the Tennant Creek area produced 210t of gold,
making it one of Australia’s richest fields.
It’s a town with no real reason for being any more. There’s
no major industry and the last big mine closed a decade ago,
although exploration continues. Mount Isa, more than 600km
away, over the Queensland border, long ago took over as the
major hub for Barkly pastoralists. Tennant Creek is chock-full
of services, though – the shire council, land councils, Aboriginal
services – here mainly to serve the 3000 townspeople.
Ask what locals think of the place and you’re as likely to cop
an explosion of expletives as people telling you they love it. The
latter have moved here from all over the world and talk of how
friendly the place is and the willingness of locals to dive in and
help. “There’s a great community spirit in town,” says Catholic
priest Father John Kennedy, who moved here three years ago.
“For example, at Christmas, all the kids in town under 10 or 12
get a present, and that’s been going for 81 years.”
It’s a town that offers a fresh start, and opportunities, with
jobs galore for those who want them. However, this also creates
a transient town, with many people coming for six months
or a couple of years, gaining experience and savings before mov-
ing on. One in three locals lived somewhere else five years ago.
And Tennant Creek will welcome anyone – famous visitors
have included Mother Teresa, Lady Diana and even the Queen,
who ate at the Goldfields Hotel in 1963.T
WELVE YEARS AGO, a pale Irishman named Bill O’Shea
left Ireland mid-winter for this cauldron of central
Australia. “It was like stepping off the plane into a blast
furnace,” he remembers. “I’d seen photos and that, but I wasn’t
prepared for what it was. I loved it.”
Soon after arriving, Bill was taken bush to prospect for gold
with Jimmy Hooker, who can’t read or write but can read the
country and recite his own poetry. Bill became hooked and now
takes others on free prospecting tours. He calls it “scrub therapy”
and still works with Jimmy sifting the mullock from old mines,
rejoicing in glistering remnants in each pan.
“With the price so good at the moment, you only need 2g a
day and you’re making wages,” says Jimmy, who came here for
a week in 1968 and has been here ever since. “You could be
looking at $30 in that pan there. So if you throw that away each
time, it’s a waste. I call it tucker money.”
Jimmy bought his first metal detector in 1977 – a plastic
$600 job that was pretty useless. Similar to almost everyoneSTIRRED UP BY WILLY-WILLIES and horses’
hooves, the red dust around Tennant Creek swirls over
spinifex and snappy gum. Since 1934, this paydirt – the source
of Australia’s last major gold rush – has settled on cars, pubs
and houses out here. It’s been breathed into the lungs of locals,
becoming part of their very being.
Ken Eastwood is an award-winning Sydney-based journalist who has trav-
elled the world, from the Arctic to Antarctica, collecting and writing stories.
A former associate editor of AG, he has been writing for the journal for more
than two decades. His last story for us was about national parks (AG 123).Heath Holden is a photographer who has lived and worked in Canada
and Singapore, travelled widely in the USA and is now based in Tasmania.
His photographic career began shooting BMX and mountain-bike events.
This is his first major assignment for AG.70 Australian Geographic