Tennant Creek

 
 

Catching up on posts now as we have been out of communication for a while. This is what happened when we were in Tennant Creek (Thursday)

After our experience on Wednesday, we thought we’d try to make Thursday a little less eventful, so we had an easy morning and then headed down to the visitors centre, which was also the Battery Mine Tour Site. We got there at about 9:30, had a look around and booked into the 11am underground gold mine tour. This gave us enough time to cruise back into town and check out the Tennant Creek Cultural Centre. It was basically a gallery which displayed Aboriginal art, photography and historical diorama’s depicting how the Aboriginal people lived when European settlers came to rule the land. It was a sobering experience and contrasted to our journey though outback Queensland where we celebrated the achievements of the European stockman etc… who did great things on the land, but somewhat at the expense of the Aboriginal people who were oppressed in many ways.

Tennant Creek is our first experience of outback Northern Territory where the number of Aboriginal people walking and hanging around town is extraordinary. There are signs all over NT prohibiting the sale of alcohol and pornography under certain conditions, just to limit the issues.

Anyway, we got back to the Mine Centre where Ray, our tour guide, took us underground and passed on his 30 years of working underground experiences. He was a good story teller and made many facts far more interesting. The mines in this area were gold mines and we got an opportunity to noodle and pan for gold ourselves. Panning is hard work and relatively fruitless, but noodling is much simpler, fun and rewarding, especially when Ray points you in the right direction. He pointed us towards the area where, what looked like gravel had been spread, but it was actually magnetite from another gold mine which it was estimated to contain approx $400k of gold. All we had to do was pick up a handful, wash it under water and look for gold on the stones – easy picking compared to panning !!! We collected a number of samples as souvenirs.

Off to Alice Springs (Ross River actually) tomorrow.