Day 9: Tennant Creek

We slept in that morning; until about 8 or 9 am. There wasn’t much on our schedule that day. We were making our way to Tennant Creek, a mining town about 4 or so hours away. Along the way, we stopped at this gas station/ town area called Wycliffe Well, which is the UFO capitol of Australia. I looked everywhere and could not find a definitive reason why it’s the UFO capitol, but it had a cool little set up, so I played along. There wasn’t much to do there, so we just had lunch and left. We continued on our way and arrived at Tennant Creek in the mid-afternoon. 

Tennant Creek is a small mining town in the middle of the Outback. It grew during Australia’s second gold rush in the 1930’s. In fact, because of this gold rush, Australia wasn’t really affected during the Great Depression as badly as the rest of the world. So considering that, Sarah and I went to see a mine. We were the only ones on the tour, so it was nice and casual; and while the mine was never actually in use, it was built for educational purposes and drills, so it was created exactly like a real one. The mine was called Battery Hill. After the tour, we picked up some souvenirs and headed to Attack Creek, a rest stop 45 min away that is famous for the time a group of aboriginals attacked Stuart’s Second Expedition, causing them to turn back. Honestly, it was a pretty cool story. The gist of it is that the Aboriginals gave his party water, and in aboriginal culture, once you give something, you can take something. They tried taking something from Stuart’s party but the party stopped them. This turned them hostile to Stuart and his men. Before we left for Attack Creek though, we found a Red Rooster in town. I heard Red Rooster was the Australia equivalent to Chick Fil A; and it was, but just not as good obviously. After our detour, we made our way to Attack Creek and made camp and had dinner. During dinner, we enjoyed the sounds of nature and watched the sunset. Honestly, the sunsets and sunrises in the outback are some of the best I’ve ever seen.


Alice Springs | Katherine